The road to the Irish Gulch gold mine is rugged and winding. To get there, you head south out of Dawson, in Canada’s Yukon Territory, then bear right at the sign for GuggieVille, an RV park named after the Guggenheim family of New York. (The Guggenheims once managed a gold-dredging operation here.) From there, a washboard gravel road leads past a slew of small mines—the Lucky Lady, Last Chance, and Gold Run—then dead-ends at Irish Gulch.

 

The skeleton of an adult Columbian mammoth, mired in California’s La Brea tar pits for some 40,000 years, bears tusks more than 11 feet long from tooth socket to tip.