Atlin was named from the Tlingit First Nations word meaning "Big Lake"

Windy day on Atlin Lake, Atlin Provincial Park BC, Summer 2007

A Summary by Diane Smith, Atlin Author

Visitors often call Atlin Eden or Shangri la and speak wistfully of living here themselves some day, while clearly envying every one of the 500 people who already do.

If this place needed an alias, then Shangri la would probably do, since Shangri la is defined as an imaginary, hidden utopia or paradise. Well, Atlin is definitely off the beaten track. It is hidden by rough mountains, and Atlin Lake spreads an icy medieval moat before the town. This fortified remoteness could certainly evoke comparisons to Shangri la.

Long ago European explorers were alerted to the existence of Atlin Lake by the Taku River Tlingit people, but they bypassed it in their eagerness to explore the Yukon River. Since beyond memory, the semi-nomadic Tlingits hunted, fished and gathered in the Atlin valley, but they never stayed year round. By the 1890s, a few Juneau teamsters were using the frozen lake as a route to mining camps on the Yukon River. There were some signs that others had been in the valley, but it was virtually unknown, unexplored and uninhabited when the first gold seekers arrived to test a stream on the west side of Atlin Lake. Fritz Miller and Kenny McLaren found gold and, unintentionally, founded Atlin (a.k.a. Shangri la) in the year 1898.

Atlin was definitely not a Shangri la in the beginning. Muddy roads, flapping tents, drafty cabins, and complaining sled dogs marked where the first few hundred arrivals dumped their duffel. For the most part, these men were deserters of the Klondike trails, who headed for the Atlin valley when they heard about the big strike on Pine Creek. By freeze up, every creek in the region was staked from source to mouth, including some that would never produce a flake of gold. While many men left Atlin for the winter, others stayed to establish businesses or get ready to mine as soon as the streams thawed. They all raced for the stampede they knew was imminent.

Ten thousand fortune hunters poured into Atlin in 1899. From the great glamour and confusion, Atlin city emerged on orderly streets, with hotels, stores, offices, specialty shops, and saloons. Eight kilometers (5 miles) to the east was Discovery City located on Pine Creek. Discovery bloomed and died as remote mining camps tend to do, but Atlin had become the hub of local and government business, and it was the "seaport". Churches were established and clubs founded, as citizens strove to make it a permanent town.

A tourist industry began when one man advertised his fishing camp, and it bloomed a few years later when the White Pass Company, the transportation monopolist, saw Atlin as a unique travel destination. Their world-wide promotion resulted in four hundred visitors per summer week disembarking from the lake boat Tarahne at the White Pass wharf. Guests were beguiled by the little town in the wilderness, and nearly overpowered by the scenery. They were pampered with the most modern accommodations, excellent food, interesting entertainment and first class service. Requests for reservations poured in.

Gold mining and tourism were Atlin's economy, but both were prone to ups and downs. White Pass abruptly abandoned the Atlin tours in the mid-1930s. World wars brought both industries to their knees. Jobs disappeared and the population dwindled.

During a long lull after WWII, when mining failed to make a comeback, town fathers lobbied for construction of the Atlin road. It was completed in 1949 and hailed as the artery through which new life would flow into Atlin. Change came slowly, but eventually a different kind of tourism developed and this time it belonged to the town.

Mining recovered with a boom when the gold price zoomed up, and leveled off when it settled, but mining is historic and ongoing and will happen here as long as there is gold to dig.

Devastating fires, market crashes, wars, corporate whims, and profound isolation, worked against Atlin from the start, but it remained stubbornly "permanent." It is, indeed, out of the way, in the bush, at the end of the road and behind the mountains, so the mystery of a Shangri la may prevail.