Good Cheer, Bountiful Meals, and Cleanly Sleeping Quarters
Leaving Dawson City for the creeks didn't mean abandoning life's comforts: fast-thinking entrepreneurs opened many roadhouses offering food, drink, and lodging. Initially these were bare-bones establishments. In 1898, Mary's Place near No. 17 Below on Bonanza was a sod shanty "where a sallow-faced little drudge of a woman doled out 'coffee and sinkers at two-bits a throw'."
The roadhouses soon became more elaborate. Mrs. M. P. Rothweiler purchased Mary's Place in the summer of 1898, transforming it into the homey Magnet Hotel, around which the settlement of Magnet City grew up. The Dawson Daily News in 1902 attributed the success of this "brainy and popular" woman to her "untiring exertions" and three essentials: "first, good cheer; second, well-cooked, well-served and bountiful meals; third, comfortable, cleanly sleeping quarters."
Other notable establishments included McCarty's, run by Mr. and Mrs. L. J. McCarty; the Thistle, owned by Mrs. C. F. Christianson at No. 79 Below on Bonanza; and Lynch's on Gold Run. More unusual was taxidermist Dick Craine's Last Chance roadhouse on Hunker Creek; it resembled a small museum. Guests could peruse Craine's collection of mounted heads, horns, and birds. "He has lately added the skull, tusks, shoulder blades, thigh bones and shin bones of a huge mastodon - the tusks are 11 feet long," reported the March 13, 1900, Yukon Sun.
