O'Brien Brewing and Malting Company

The O'Brien Brewing and Malting Company, also called the Klondike Brewery, was a beer producer founded by Thomas O'Brien in 1904 in Klondike City, in Yukon Territory, Canada, next to the Klondike Mines Railway terminal that O'Brien also owned. Built with modern California-style equipment, the brewery produced about 68,748 gallons of beer in its first full year and did strong business during the Klondike Gold Rush era. As Dawson City population fell from a peak of 30,000 to about 2,000 by 1909 and the temperance movement grew, the company weakened; O'Brien sold his shares in 1915, and territorial prohibition in 1919 closed the brewery for good. The abandoned site, now owned by the Trondek Hwechin First Nation, was documented archaeologically in 1998.