EPISODE 235 YUKON DIARY KENO CITY: WHERE IS IT? “AT THE END OF THE WORLD”
“That was one hell of a fire.”
“What fire?”
“The night not so long ago that the Keno City Hotel burned to the ground.”
“How did it happen?”
“No one knows for sure…but there is a police investigation.”
“How has he fire affected Keno City?”
“Well, there was never much to see in the City…now there is even less.”
“Was it ever s city?”
“Never.”
“Is it worth the trip?”
“Yes..for sure…if you like mystery…if you like places that time has forgotten.”
“What about the ‘sporting girls’?
“Once upon a time the sporting girls were here but that was long ago.”
Too bad. The Keno City hotel burned to the ground recently which means there
is even less of Keno City to find. Mysterious circumstance fire. Now there is only
one place to buy beer in Keno City.
Main Street in Keno City. The Museum has gathered together bits and pieces of Keno City and Keno Hill history.
Worth a visit? I love adventure so I would without hesitation say yes. But if you are seeking the hurly burly days
of the rush for silver, then you will be disappointed.
alan skeoch
Jan. 2021
KENO CITY
How do i give you a short impression of Keno City? Not very udiffcult. “If you are looking
for a place at the very end of the civilized world, then take a drive to Keno City.” Drive slowly
otherwise you might miss the metropolis. There is not much left to see now that the
Keno Hotel has burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances.
A couple of years ago Keno City had two bars facing each other; Competing with each other
for the trade from the population of the city. Population? Are there 12 or 20 residents? No more
than that. If you are wanting women as well as booze you will be very disappointed because
the ‘sporting girls’ have long since departed.
I have come to the conclusion that rumours of good time girls were… like the rumour of Mark Twain’s
death … grossly exagerrated. That conclusion was made after listening to story after story of rampant prostituion in
Dawson City then Keno City. Stories magnified by men who had never been in the Yukon in
those bawdy house years. Stories around a smoky campfire. Storie told to distract from the millions
of blood sucking bastards hovering on the smoke periphery.
After more than three months working and drinking in and around Keno City, we never
set our glasses down in a Keno City bar. Was that a mistake, an accident or just good luck?
The city was dead. The city could not be found except in the imagination. The closest I came
to meeting a Yukon prostitute was the woman in Mayo Landing bar who offered to take
me to her room to cut my hair. She was about 60 years old, very large, very drunk…very sad.
Keno City was never ever a City. Nor will it ever become a city. When I passed through Keno City
in 1962, I was stunned. What city? In1962 there were still some reminders of better times. Houses
and buildings in need of paint and attention to detail Some boarded up. No real main street. I do not
even remember any sign that there had ever been a main street except for a large false fronted
commercial building that could have once been store. In 1962 there were only 20 people living
in Keno City. Today, in 2021, I noted the population had fallen to 12. Today they cannot even drink
the water in the town because it is loaded with arsenic which has percolated down from the
Keno Hill silver mine at the top of Keno Hill and the Wernecke Camp mine halfway up.
Stories told of the boom times in Keno City usually spent a lot of print on the ‘sporting girls’…the
hookers (prostitutes) that migrated from Dawson City to Keno City in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Dozens of them apparently organized and housed by famous madams like Bombay Peggy, Ruby Scott and Tiger Lil…women
who had done well in the skin trade of Dawson.
Most stories I heard over campfires at night were lurid enough to make me believe that Keno City
was once devoted only to prostitution. Servicing the 800 or so men who got every second Sunday
off and had no place to spend their money except Keno City which was a bit of a boom town down at
the bottom of Keno Hill in the 1920’s and 1930’s. To stop fights for access to women and liquor the mine
owners made sure that the day off Sundays were staggered.
In truth Keno Hill was never a place where there was no law and order. Eventually an RCMP detachment
was stationed in Keno but the officers seemed to spend most of their time trying to find illegal makers of
moonshine…bootleggers in other words. And they failed at that job since there were lots of places
to hide stills.
There was no need for a jail in Keno City. Instead there was the flagpole. Residents that needed police
discipline were simply handcuffed to the flagpole as a feast for mosqitoes in the summer time and near
frozen to death in the winter time where temperatures could get as low as 50 below zero.
If you thirst for adventure then Keno City is the place to visit. I mean it. A city that never
existed really. Worth the drive? I would say yes…for sure. If you want to find a city at
the end of our civilized world.
NEXT EPISODE: KENO CITY’S ‘SPORTING GIRLS’ (PROSTITUTES)
This is the famous street of prostitutes in Dawson City. When the gold was gone they moved
to Keno City where silver had been found in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Being a sporting girl
was never glorious or very profitable for most of the girls.
next EPISODE … SPORTING GIRLS AS TOLD BY DR. AHO