3 Best Sights in Canada

Here you can learn about the difficult lives of the local men whose job it was to extract coal from undersea collieries. After perusing the exhibits, you can don a hard hat and descend into the damp, claustrophobic recesses of a shaft beneath the museum with a retired miner who'll recount his own experiences toiling in the bowels of the earth. The 15-acre property also includes a replica village that gives you a sense of workers' home life, and it has a theater where the Men of the Deeps choir, a world-renowned group of working and retired miners, performs on certain evenings in summer.

When this massive wooden-hull gold dredge was in operation (1913–59), it ate rivers whole, spitting out gravel and keeping the gold for itself—on one highly productive day it sucked up 800 ounces. These days the dredge—a Canadian National Historic Site—occupies a spot along Bonanza Creek about 10 miles southeast of Dawson. The dredge is still worth a look, even on your own, if only to ponder the geology and economics that made it viable to haul this enormous piece of equipment into the middle of nowhere at a time when gold only brought $20 an ounce. You can pan for gold yourself in Bonanza Creek, where the Klondike Visitors Association offers a free claim for visitors. Bring your own supplies (almost every gift shop in town sells pans). You can also view the full inner workings of the dredge on one of the Dawson City tours offered by the visitors center.

The site of several tragedies, the Springhill coalfield gained international attention in 1958 when an earthquake created a "bump" that trapped mine workers underground (75 of them died), but today at this museum you can descend into a mine under safer circumstances. Some of the guides are retired miners who provide firsthand accounts of their working days. Children under four are not admitted.