Skagway – famous for the Klondike Gold Rush
Sunday 19 May
What a day we have had today. We arrived here around 8.00am this morning, beautiful sunshine and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Skagway is set in a stunning glacial valley and built on the economic shoulders of the bustling mining industry that once thrived here. It was also the gateway to the gold-rich Canadian Yukon. The population is around 1,204 –the size of a school roll, but doubles in the summer tourist season. Between 1897 and 1898 during the Gold Rush, Skagway was apparently a lawless town, described by a member of the North-West Mounted Police as “little better than hell on earth” with fights, prostitutes and liquor ever present. It’s certainly a lot quieter now!
Once again, we had split tours, Jo and I first off the boat for a tour of White Pass Summit. What a day to go up there, stunning, with the sunshine brushing the snowy mountaintops and lots of blue skies. We went by coach on the Klondike Highway, stopping at various lookout points to get some fabulous photographs. White Pass is in Canada so we needed to go through the border, this entailed us sitting in our seats and holding our passport with the photo next to our face whilst the border guard walked through the coach! The summit rises to 2,865 feet and would have been a pretty hard slog for the gold seekers passing over the border from Skagway into Canada, they certainly didn’t have the luxury of the great road we were on. It was interesting to see pieces of wood, painted red and white, that looked like hockey sticks jutting out from posts on each side of the road, our driver told us that they are for the snowploughs in Winter. The road has to be kept open as it’s the only way in and out of the town, and the snow can be so high and visibility so bad, that they follow the sticks….white means you’re alright and red means you’re dead!!!! We were thrilled with the views and were especially pleased when we captured the train coming through as well.
Back to the boat for a quick lunch and with the skies turning a darker shade of grey, we decided to put an extra layer of merino on before we ventured out to walk around Skagway town and what a delight it is. With buildings from the gold rush-era and newer ones, but with facades resembling those of the late 1890’s, housing charming little shops and saloons, it looked like the sort of town that Disney would copy for a film set in Disneyland. We wandered along the boardwalk of the historic district and retraced the steps of those earnest gold prospectors. What a pretty little town, one of the buildings is covered in 8,863 pieces of driftwood! Hardly surprising then that this town features in many movies including John Wayne’s movie “North to Alaska” and Robin Williams’ “The Big White”
We had a fabulous 2 ½ hours wandering around, despite the fact the weather turned rather gnarly, cold and wet, it didn’t matter, we thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
William “Billy” Moore who was a member of an1887 boundary survey expedition, made the first recorded investigation of the pass over the Coast Mountains which later became known as White Pass. He believed that gold lay in the Klondike and he and his son, Bernard, claimed a 160-acre homestead at the mouth of the Skagway River. They built a log cabin, sawmill and wharf in anticipation of future gold prospectors passing through. Skagway became an important port during the Klondike Gold Rush. In 1898 a 14-mile, steam operated aerial tramway was constructed up the Skagway side of White Pass for the prospectors who could afford the fee to use it. And in 1898 construction began on a narrow-gauge railroad linking Skagway to Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon in Canada. The population during this time increased to 30,000 with all the gold prospectors, which seems amazing given how small the town is, and that now there is only just over 1,200 residents! One construction crew battled their way north laying rail and another crew came from the north heading south and together they met in Carcross on 29 July 1900 – 35,000 men worked on the construction of this railroad, all shared the dream and the hardship. The White Pass & Yukon Route was designated an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1994, an honour shared with such engineering marvels as The Eiffel Tower and The Statue of Liberty. This railroad route is now preserved as a heritage railway.
Geoff and Earl chose to follow the steps of the Yukon’s Early Gold Seekers….. “Gold! Gold! Gold!..... When gold was found in Whitehorse in the Yukon in 1896, Gold seekers steamed their way up the Inside Passage waterway and arrived in Dyea and Skagway to begin the overland trip to Klondike over treacherous and dangerous trails and waterways. Some prospectors chose the shorter, but steeper Chilkoot Trail which began in Dyea. Each person was required by the Canadian Border Police to carry a ton of supplies up “The Golden Stairs” to the summit of the Chilkoot Pass. Others chose the longer, less steep White Pass Trail where a packhorse could be used to carry their gear. Both trails led to the interior lake country where they had to build their own boat to get them down the 550-mile journey through the lake systems to to the gold fields in the Yukon Valley. The Trail and White Pass were filled with hazards and three thousand horses died on the Trail due to its tortures and the inexperience of the stampeders.
Geoff and Earl rode the train from Carcross down to Skagway – they were amazed, and a little worried, at the steepness of the cliffs immediately beside the train, and what looked like flimsy bridges that spanned the gorges, and the narrowness of the rail gauge – imagine those construction workers, with only hand tools and dynamite, carving the tracks into the steep granite rock mountain-sides. And would you believe only two men were killed, and that was from one big falling rock which killed them instantly and their bodies still lie under that rock, which hosts a memorial to them. There are 20 diesel electric locomotives and 92 restored and replica passenger coaches, and all are named after lakes and rivers in Alaska, Yukon and British Colombia. The oldest car, Lake Emerald was built in 1883 and The Lake Lebarge car carried Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on a royal tour out of Whitehorse in 1959.
I’m pleased to inform you that they made it back to the ship, just before we departed. And big news…….they saw 3 bears on their way down!
