July 28

Skagway, Skagway, Skagway. How do I talk about Skagway? Well, before jumping in let’s backtrack a bit. Up in the morning packing what we need for the day leaving the trailer behind we head south the 65 or so miles to Skagway. The landscape starts out as spruce trees like so many other places up here. As we approach the US border we discover there’s close to 30 miles of no mans land. We passed Canadian Customs and drive for 30 miles before we hit US Customs. The landscape between these to border crossings is surreal. Many say it’s more like the moon surface then just about any other place in the world. I’m not sure of that since there were a few tiny spruce trees yet it’s a mountainous barren land. The landscape reminded me of the area surrounding Sudbury, Ontairo in the 1970’s. Sudbury had the world’s largest nickel smelter putting killing the forests for miles around. We drove over White Pass the same White Pass that has the White Pass Railroad. More on that in a bit. We get to US Customs. “Any fruits or vegetables to declare?” We reply with no. Then we are informed we are randomly selected for “additional screening.” Translation, we are going to search your truck. We go and park where directed and come inside to the waiting room. As we are walking into the building we remember the fresh British Columbia sweet cherries we purchased in Whitehorse. My thoughts jump to getting into hot water for not declaring them while Marsha was much cooler saying we just tell them we forgot to mention the cherries. We get to the desk and fess up about the cherries and receive a no problem, but declare them now. We then waited maybe 15 minutes while they searched the truck. The only painful part of the wait was having to look out to two large photo portraits on the wall, one of the president and the other the vp. We are free to go and head into Skagway.

What is it about Skagway that makes it such a dichotomy? Let me start with a bit about its history. When gold was discovered near Dawson City in the fall of 1896 word got out to the world in 1897. The world was still in a global depression and the news of a huge gold strike was shouted around the world. All one needed to do was to get up to Dawson City, Yukon and pick up huge gold nuggets. Get rich so easily! People came from around the world seeking their fortune. The educated, the rich, the poor, the farmers, the factory workers, the homeless, and more. They all headed to Dawson City to seek fortunes. How does one get to the Yukon? There are various routes including taking ships and river boats from the US West Coast north, through the Being Sea to the Yukon River and up that river more than one thousand miles. Only the wealthy could afford to do the all water route when it was not iced over that 8 months a year. The next best way and the only affordable way was to take a ship up to either Dyea or Skagway. They are about 8 miles apart. From there one just needed to walk over the mountains 35 to 40 miles to Bennett Lake, build a boat and float your way over a couple of lakes and down the Yukon River to Dawson City. It’s an easy trip, or so it was reported. The misinformation was spread to entice would be miners to take either the Chilkoot Trail out of Dyea or the White Pass Trail from Skagway. At the top of the pass the miners would leave the US and enter Canada. The Northwest Mounted Police were at the top of the passes not allowing anyone to enter unless they had a year of supplies with them. A year of supplies is well over a thousand pounds. Both passes were difficult and many lost their life on those trails. The would be miners needed to take 20 or 30 trips up over the pass getting their supplies up before being allowed into Canada. As one trudged up the pass with a load on his back (their were some women that did this journey, but the vast majority were men) if one stepped off the trail they may need to wait hours to get back into the line. The trail in the winter was carved ice steps. The debate raged which trail; White Pass Trail, or Chilkoot Pass Trail was easier. The answer was always the other pass, cause this one was hell. One vet of the gold rush described one trail as Hell and the other, Damnation.

The towns at the start of the trail were not safe places. The “bad guy” leading the crime against the newcomers was Soapy Smith. He was shot in the early 1900’s with the person killing him becoming a hero.

Both Skagway and Dyea were Tlinget clan communities. They hired out their services packing supplies up the passes but many of the newcomers could not afford them. It cost an individual maybe 3 oz of gold to have supplies hauled up the pass. That may translate to maybe $5,000 today. Many Klondikers lost their lives on the trail.

Anyway, Skagway was on boon town with maybe close to 100,000 people trying to get to Dawson City. There is history and lots of it. Jack London, writer of Call of the Wild traveled along the trail from Skagway. Skagway seems like an exciting place to visit, and don’t get me wrong, it is. Why the hesitation on visiting Skagway? Skagway has maybe 2,000 residence yet up to five large cruise ships come into port on any given day during the season. That translates to 10,000 people descending upon Skagway each day. One shop keeper said, don’t come on a Tuesday or Wednesday. “If you step off the sidewalk the sea of people is so great that you’ll need to wait to get back on it again. Much like the Klondikers stepping off the trail back in 1898. The weekends are the slow time, so if you are not on a cruise ship visit Skagway on a Saturday. Much of downtown Skagway is a National Historic Park and it’s run very well by the Park Service. The downtown has wooden sidewalks and shops. Shops, shops, and more shops. Most of the shops are owned or associated with the cruise lines. How many high-end jewelry stores sell diamonds can a town of 2,500 support. We saw at least five of those. Well we saw them only from the outside. The key to shopping in Skagway for us was to go into the “locally owned” stores.

After a Ranger led program we explored a bit of the town then headed over to Dyea, eight miles away. The town no longer exists, but there is a cemetery where many who died on the trail were buried including around 100 who perished on Good Friday, 1898 in an avalanche.

I have mixed feeling about visiting Skagway, but in the end I’m glad that we did.