SS Keno in dry dock in Dawson City
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History | |
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Canada | |
Name | SS Keno |
Owner | White Pass and Yukon Route |
Operator | British Yukon Navigation Company |
Port of registry | Dawson City |
Launched | 1922 |
Completed | 1922 |
Maiden voyage | 15 August 1922 |
Out of service | 1951 |
Refit | 1937 |
Status | Museum ship in Dawson City, Yukon |
General characteristics | |
Type | Sternwheel paddle steamer |
Tonnage | 613.05 tons |
Length | 140.6 ft (42.9 m) |
Beam | 30.4 ft (9.3 m) |
Draught | 3 ft (0.91 m) |
Decks | 3 |
Official name | SS Keno National Historic Site of Canada |
Designated | 1962 |
The SS Keno is a preserved historic sternwheel paddle steamer, a National Historic Site of Canada, and a unit of the Canadian national park system. The SS Keno is berthed in a dry dock on the waterfront of the Yukon River in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada.
The vessel was constructed in 1922, in Whitehorse, by the British Yukon Navigation Company, a subsidiary of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway company. For most of its career it transported silver, zinc and lead ore down the Stewart River from mines in the Mayo district to the confluence of the Yukon and Stewart rivers at Stewart City. It was retired from commercial service in 1951 due to the extension and improvement of the Klondike Highway in the years after World War II.
Following its withdrawal from service the SS Keno was laid up at the BYN Co. shipyard in Whitehorse, before being selected for preservation and donated by the company to the Canadian Government in 1959. On 25 August 1960 the Keno left Whitehorse to sail downstream to Dawson City. In doing so she became the last of the Yukon's sternwheeler steamers to navigate the Yukon River under her own power. Three days later she arrived in Dawson and was subsequently installed as a tourist attraction and a permanent memorial to the approximately 250 sternwheelers that provided a vital transport service on the Yukon River and its tributaries during the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.