After The Rush

Discovery emptied. Atlin’s businesses closed, and the population shrank to a few hundred people. Fires in 1901 and 1914 took much of the townsite. The easy gold was gone, but some keen miners remained, mining deeper and slower.

In the 1920s, Atlin was marketed as the “Switzerland of the North.” Guests travelled through the Inside Passage, then by rail and lake boat. The Tarahne, built in 1917 and powered by gasoline rather than steam, still sits on the shore. But the Depression ended tourism, and the Atlin Inn closed in 1936.

For another decade, no road reached the town. In 1949-51 the Canadian Army built the Atlin Road, south from the Alaska Highway.

The town was no longer isolated.

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