Carcross

Carcross Desert is often called the smallest desert in the world, which is not quite right: it is about two and a half square kilometres of sand left when glacial lakes dried out, fed by wind off Bennett Lake and too humid to count as a true desert, so it is a dune field rather than a desert proper. The town beside it is the home of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, whose commons at the centre carries carved poles and buildings raised since 2010 in a deliberate cultural rebuilding. Skookum Jim, one of the men whose 1896 find started the Klondike stampede, was Tagish and came from here. The White Pass railway runs in from Skagway.

History

Caribou Crossing was a fishing and hunting camp of the Inland Tlingit and Tagish people, with artefacts in the region some 4,500 years old, and it was named after the huge herds of caribou that crossed the natural land bridge between Bennett Lake and Nares Lake. The modern village began in 1896, during the Klondike Gold Rush, as a stopping place for prospectors going to and from the goldfields of Dawson City, with a Royal Mail station and the Dominion Telegraph Line, and in 1904 it was renamed Carcross because its mail kept being mixed up with the Cariboo district in British Columbia (Wikipedia, Carcross).

What's there

• The dune field - two and a half square kilometres of sand from drained glacial lakes.
• The Carcross commons - carved poles and buildings by the First Nation.
• The Skookum Jim connection - the Tagish man behind the Klondike discovery.
• The White Pass railway - the narrow-gauge line arriving from Skagway.

When to go

June to September for the railway and full services; the town is quiet in winter. Emerald Lake is a few kilometres north on the same road.

Before you go

The desert is a dune field, not a true desert, and is small. The railway runs seasonally and books ahead. Services in town are limited.

Nearby

Emerald Lake lies north; Whitehorse is beyond it.

Key facts