Klondike, Yukon

Klondike, Yukon

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Hunker Creek Valley, Klondike
Official name	Tr’ondëk-Klondike
Criteria	Cultural: iv
Reference	1564
Inscription	2023 (45th Session)
Area	334.54 ha
Buffer zone	351.7 ha

The Klondike (/ˈklɒndaɪk/; from Hän Tr'ondëk 'hammerstone water') is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City. The area is merely an informal geographic region, and has no function to the territory as any kind of administrative region. It is located in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation.

The Klondike is famed due to the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896 and lasted until 1899. Since then, gold has been mined continuously in that area, except for a pause in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 2023, the cultural landscape of the Tr’ondëk-Klondike was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, because of its testimony to the adaptation of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people to the European colonization that began in the late 19th century.^[1]