Historic & Heritage Sites
Heritage buildings (Picture BC photo)
The first stop for most visitors to Atlin is the community's old school house, built in 1902. The schoolhouse is now the Atlin Museum and contains information and artifacts from the town's diverse history, most significantly its gold rush years in the early 1900s. Take a walking tour.
The Atlin Museum offers informative historical walking tours of downtown Atlin and its restored original buildings. Cost is by donation. The tours teach participants about Atlin's beginnings, its popularity with stampeders, tourists and miners in the early 1900s, and how the town shrank from about 10,000 residents to its population of 400 today.
M.V. Tarahne
A particular point of interest is the M.V. Tarahne, an old propeller ship parked at the edge of downtown on the shores of Atlin Lake. The ship was once a luxury liner that cruised around the lake in the 1920s, when Atlin was a popular tourist destination. The boat was put out of commission during the Great Depression in 1936.
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In July, the town hosts an annual tea party right on the boat. Locals dress up in period clothing to sip tea, eat sandwiches, and socialize with visitors.
More Historic Sites
Another interesting stop is the Globe Theatre, which was only recently renovated since it was constructed in 1917. The theatre sometimes hosts movie nights, live musical performance, and community celebrations.
Many buildings in town are worth entering, such as the courthouse, which is now home to the local art gallery. Another site to check out is the pioneer cemetery, in which lay the graves of many of the community's first settlers, including Fritz Miller and Kenneth McLaren, who were the first to discover gold in the area in July 1898.
Some visitors are interested in visiting actual gold panning and digging sites. Prospectors are quite secretive of their terrain, however. Ask one respectfully and maybe they will let you have a look and explain how the process works.
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