Alaska - Skagway, gateway to gold - Stories from the cruise

During the night, the Golden Princess slipped back down the Lynn Canal and headed north, navigating some 93 nautical miles up the Taiya Inlet to Skagway (just above the "12" marker on the map). We came here, among other reasons, to ride a train.

Skagway has a long history of visitors just passing through. For centuries a sleepy Tlingit Indian fishing village, the discovery of gold in the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon Territory in 1896 changed everything. On July 29, 1897, the steamer Queen docked with the first boat load of prospectors and soon other ships brought tens of thousands of hopeful miners into the new town to prepare for the 500-mile journey to the gold fields in Canada.

Not everyone headed to the gold fields however; many realized how difficult the trek ahead would be and chose to stay behind to supply goods and services to miners - known as "mining the miners." Within weeks, stores, saloons, and offices lined the muddy streets. By June 1898, with a "permanent" population nearing 10,000, approximately 1,000 prospective miners a week passed through town. Skagway became the largest city in Alaska at the time.

The most heavily-traveled routes by "stampeders" to the gold fields in Dawson City were two treacherous passages from the port of Skagway and nearby village of Dyea across the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains to the Canadian border; one by way of the Chilkoot Pass and the other over the White Pass.

At the border, the Canadian North West Mounted Police would not allow prospectors to enter unless they had one ton of supplies. And not just any supplies - there was a very lengthy and very specific list that included, for instance, how much rope, how many blankets, how many picks and shovels and even how much soap to bring into the promised land! This usually required several trips across the passes. 

With an obvious need for better transportation than pack horses used over the White Pass or human portage over the Chilkoot Pass, the White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge railway - the WP&YR - was constructed as a means of reaching the gold fields. It was a prodigious engineering feat, costing $10 million 1890 dollars. At one point, 35,000 men were employed in its construction. It was completed in 1900, just as the gold fever was ending.

 Hauling freight and ore kept the line in business, in one form or another, until 1982, when it finally shut down. And then the cruise ships showed up in the Taiya Inlet. Today, the WP&YR is thriving as a "Heritage" rail line, carrying over 390,000 passengers during the 2012 May to September tourism season.

As you can see, that old wooden trestle is still in use, a fact that did not please a certain tourist on this excursion.

Today, diesel locomotives pull vintage parlor cars on the line ( a steam engine is available for charter). The most popular route is a 20-mile excursion up the Skagway River Valley to the White Pass, rising some 3,000 feet in the process. At times the grade is nearly 4%, and the hair-pin curves hug the twisting, turning route blasted out of solid rock, or cross the canon on narrow trestles..

 The gold and the miners are long gone, and the current population of Skagway is 920 hardy souls. The visitors, however, are still coming. More than 900,000 people visit Skagway each summer, coming, as we did, on the cruise ships that dock daily. Today's economy is based solely on "mining the tourists."

Next destination: Glacier Bay National Park.