Until the discovery of gold, Dawson had been a rather sleepy place, consisting mainly of tents. Actually it was the old-timers, the sourdoughs, who had the best chance to stake claims. By the time the "cheechakos" arrived a year later most of the best sites had been occupied.
Dawson was a boom town, its destiny tied to gold. Once the gold was gone, as it was by 1903, Dawson declined. The population in 1908 was about 8,000; in the 1920s and 1930s it stabilized at approximately 4,000 people. The mining of gold was taken over by more efficient, capital-intensive methods, such as hydraulic mining and dredging. The advent of such expensive enterprises meant the end of older methods of placer mining by individuals.
