Historians say winter biking goes back more than a century in the Yukon

The sight of a cyclist in January in the Yukon can prompt confusion from some onlookers — but historians say bicycles were being used to get around the territory in winter long before cars. 

Nearly 130 years ago, cyclists were travelling up the Yukon River on their way to Dawson City in search of gold. The Klondike Gold Rush happened during a period of economic downturn in the U.S. that coincided with a surge in popularity for bicycles.

"There was this worldwide craze for bicycles because in many ways they represented freedom,” said Karl Gurcke, a historian with the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Alaska. 

"Before bicycles came into common usage, the ordinary person would basically have to walk to get anywhere," he said. "Horses, you know, cost money. They had to be fed. And in some places, they had to be picked up after."

Gurcke says while some may see northern cycling as a more recent phenomenon, imported from the south by southerners, there's actually a long history of cycling in the North. 

“There are a number of photographs of bikes on the White Pass trail,” he said. “There’s a picture of a crate of bicycles on the White Pass.

"Of course, a lot of those Klondike stampeders were people from the south … but they did it, they used them. Bicycles are all over the place up here, and it goes back to the Gold Rush.” 

By the early 20th century, newspapers reported bikes had become a common sight on the White Pass, and a “nuisance” in Dawson City. 

Perhaps the most famous Gold Rush-era cyclist was Edward Jesson, who taught himself to ride at –48 C in Dawson City, and then rode 1,200 kilometres to Nome, Alaska. 

“He would always ride behind the dogs, so kind of in the ruts on the frozen ice that the dogs had occupied,” said Sean Ridder, executive director of the Yukon Transportation Museum.

“He was quite the puzzle to a lot of people on the trail, I think.”

Ridder says when Jesson made it Nome, people in town "thought he was a really fast dog team from far away.”

“And then they realized he was a guy on a wheel, as they called it at the time.” 

In his 2014 book Yukon Sport: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, John Firth wrote that for most of the territory's history, bicycling "was a means of winter transportation rather than a competitive summer pastime.”