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From Primedia Publications
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Skagway, Alaska
Pristine land falls victim to the Klondike Gold Rush.

By J. Kingston Pierce

By the fall of 1897, as news of gold discoveries in northwestern Canada's Yukon region spread worldwide, the glacier-shaded harbor of Skagway, Alaska, became so congested with boats carrying would-be prospectors that new arrivals had to anchor up to a mile offshore. Overloaded scows then shuttled men, women, children, and their provisions to the town's gravel beach. On the beach, owners protected their piles of belongings with scattershot curses and the rapid cocking of pistols.

A decade before, not a single cabin had marred the forested triangle of southeast Alaskan flatland that would become Skagway (its name derived from a Tlingit Indian word meaning "home of the north wind"). But after steamships bore tons of Klondike riches to San Francisco and Seattle in July 1897, the town began taking shape. Within three months, it was littered with tents and rickety wooden structures housing 4,000 people. Over the next two years, tens of thousands more would land at either Skagway or the neighboring hamlet of Dyea, from which a pair of parallel trails—the White Pass route and the more popular one through Chilkoot Pass—led north across Alaska's Coast Mountains. From there, miners rode the Yukon River another 550 miles to the remote Canadian boomtown of Dawson City, adjacent to the gold fields.



One observer groused that Skagway was "little better than hell on earth." No wonder everyone who came to Skagway back then seemed merely to be passing through. As quickly as they could.
The gold rush briefly made Skagway the largest city in Alaska, with a population that fluctuated between 10,000 and 20,000. Its main street, which some wag had dubbed "Broadway," was a mud rut bordered by campsites, blacksmiths shops and fly-by-night restaurants. There were as many as 80 local saloons where a cheechako (Alaska newcomer) could gargle down strong spirits before embarking for Dawson. Among the sidewalk throngs were bogus preachers, circus performers, and even a trained dancing bear named Alexis. Scarcely less visible were cardsharps and harlots, grifters and gunmen—a contingent that gave Skagway a distinctly anarchical repute. One observer groused that Skagway was "little better than hell on earth." No wonder everyone who came to Skagway back then seemed merely to be passing through. As quickly as they could.

Even now, Skagway hosts far more transients than residents. At last count, only about 700 people lived here year-round. Yet from late spring through early fall (the usual Alaskan tourist months), up to five cruise ships a day dock at Skagway, disgorging 8,000 or so travelers to flood the vintage business buildings along Broadway, sample beers at the raucous Red Onion Saloon (once a prominent bordello), and point their video cameras in wonder at the Arctic Brotherhood Hall, its quirky 1899 facade decorated with 10,000 pieces of driftwood.

Skagway has found its future as a relic of the past. After 1899, when the Klondike stampede cooled, the town lapsed into a quieter role as a shipping port for the Yukon Territory. With little in the way of community development funds, it left its turn-of-the-century public architecture standing. Over the last two decades, the U.S. National Park Service has spent more than $11 million restoring Skagway to the way it looked in the 1890s, when honky-tonk and gunshots were the common music of its streets.

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Seattleite J. Kingston Pierce is a frequent contributor to Historic Traveler.

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