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"Downtown" Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
OUR NEXT port of call was Skagway. As you might have gleaned from my posts so far, this part of Alaska along the inside passage, though it is the geographically smallest part of the state, holds some of Alaska's most archetypal towns, including the state capitol of Juneau, and Ketchikan, Haines, Sitka (which I wish we could have visited there), and of course, Skagway.
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Inside Passage - Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
TO THE east of the inside passage is the vast, wild, undeveloped and largely uninhabitated Yukon territory, virtually all in Canada. Alaska occupies part of the coastline which stretches around 1,000 miles from Ketchikan (just north of Vancouver, Canada) up to Skagway, where the passage opens up into the Gulf of Alaska. On that coastline, the land reaches east to the Yukon - a scant 100 miles at its widest point. By comparison, the Yukon stretches some 400 miles from the coast to its eastern boarder with the Northwest Territories, which are similarly rugged and uninhabited and continue yet another 1,200 miles to Hudson Bay. If you click into the photo of "The White Pass," below, using the train in the left middle portion of the image for scale, you get a feel for the vastness of the Yukon. Most of the Alaskan coastline is rugged, mountainous, and very sparsely populated once you clear the immediate coastal areas.
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White Pass - Alaska/Yukon Territory
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
WITH THE possible exception of Juneau, which is the capitol city, the primary industries here are very limited. Today: primarily fishing and tourism (while Alaska is known for its oil and gas production, most of that is done nearly 1,000 miles north at the very northern tip of the state, what is known as "The North Slope," on the Arctic Ocean). There is some hunting, trapping and timber production also. A lot of entrepeneurs have build these industries into tourist attractions (like our Aleutian Ballad "Deadliest Catch" adventure), involving so-called "hands-on" experiences with dogsledding, panning for gold, and visits into parts of the Yukon.
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Camp Skagway Arctic Brotherhood Hall
Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
CRUISE SHIPS (years back it was steamship companies) have been bringing sightseers and visitors to Skagway since its beginning in the lat 1800's. But modern lines - like Princess - started their Alaskan cruising in the late 1960s. The port is one of the best ports on the Inside Passage, with room for 4 large cruise ships, in addition to the ferries from the "Alaska Marine Highway." This clearly makes tourism a long-time important industry for Skagway. Pre-Covid, in excess of 1 million cruise passengers visited Skagway annually (and predictions are that we will shortly again exceed that number). A recent hiccup (a serious rockslide in 2023 impaired the cruise terminals - my understanding is that has now been fixed), curtailing some cruise traffic.
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Diamond Princess Docked in Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
TUCKED ALL the way at the northern end of a fjord, the waters are relatively calm and protected, and the port is a very nice facility. As is not uncommon, our Diamond Princess docked during the night, and since our excursion did not occur until later that morning, I was - as is my custom - up early and on shore. I could see the harbor and the town from the upper cruise ship deck and I wanted to explore.
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Skagway Harbor, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
SKAGWAY HARBOR is not huge, but it is impressively capable of lodging a substantial number of boats of all description. I was interested - in addition to seagoing personal craft to see several exploration and research "ships" (maybe boats?).
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Skagway Harbor, Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
THE MORNING light was good and there were some nice, saturated colors as well as some great reflections on the water.
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Skagway Harbor, Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
MY RESEARCH of this part our trip told me that most of the "things to do" along Alaska's inside passage involved outdoor activity (fishing, hiking, visiting the glaciers, airplane and helicopter rides, etc). The only other things were to explore the quaint downtowns, visit exhibits showing local native culture (totem poles are big in this area) and history. Much of that has - sadly - become more "theatre" for the tourists and the economic opportunists (though I don't criticize locals for making a living any way they can).
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White Pass & Yukon Railroad Depot
Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
FOR OUR visit to Skagway, my research had disclosed a major attraction that is probably the main event for the Skagway stop: The Whitepass Railroad. There is a good historical story there. But before we get there: Skagway and my "fantasy" reference. As a whole, Alaska is very wild and sparsely populated. It is highly influenced by the "Alaska Native" population and their cultures and traditions. For many years, Alaska was known primarily for its fisheries - mainly salmon - and by the 1940's the salmon canneries had primarily moved up to Alaska from the U.S. Northwest. But there was one other huge "vocation" that Alaska, and particularly, The Yukon became wildly famous for: gold. The discovery of gold in the Klondike region of the Yukon, right at the U.S. - Canadian border, trigger perhaps the first North American "Gold Rush" in 1896. It is estimated that during the rush, some 100,000 "stampeders" tried to reach Dawson City and Klondike, the region where the find was. 10,000 - 20,000 of them took the overland route from Skagway and through The White Pass over the summit of the mountain range (after Sir Thomas White, who was the Candian Minister of the Interior at the time). It was brutal trip, and there were many deaths (from numerous causes). Skagway, a very small outpost founded by a former steamboat captain. His tiny homestead was inundated by gold seekers and Skagway grew overnight to a tent city, soon adding "infrastructure" which largely involved provisioning and services for he tens of thousands of "new" residents.
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Locomotive Check - White Pass & Yukon Railroad
Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
IN MAY, 1898, construction was begun on "The White Pass and Yukon Railroad," whose purpose was to get passengers up over the White Pass. It was completed in July 1900 (from Skagway to White Horse), perhaps the proverbial "day late and dollar short." By then, just 4 years after it had begun, the gold rush was over. Claims had been made and in many cases exhausted. There was no more gold, and the prospectors moved on to the next "find." Perhaps unfortunately, Skagway began to decline and at one point was no longer inhabited. A 1898 census showed Skagway's polulation was 10,000. By 1900, it had dropped to just over 3,000. Even so, Skagway endured, and became Alaska's first incorporated city (just a day before Juneau). The next years were filled with "fits and starts," with the railroad primarily being used to ship freight and goods up and minerals from mines operated by Faro. Responsible for 95% of the railroad's revenues, Faro eventually closed down. Though they attempted to build a tourism trade, the railroad eventually ceased operations for some years.
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One of hundreds of spectacular views from the White Pass & Yukon Railway Train
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
IN 1976, Congress passed legislation creating a "Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park." In June 1976 a temporary visitor center opened in the old depot. Still, for a number of reasons, it wasn't until 1988 that the railroad was reopened for a summer tourist operation with 3-hour round-trips to the summit. The former center city of Skagway, by the time we were there in 2010, was more of an amusement park attraction than a working city. The permanent resident population of Skagway today is just under 1,000. That swells to several thousand from temporary workers who come during the summer months to serve the tourists. There are numerous historical buildings there, some open for business, but clearly primarily serving the cruise passengers. It is pretty clear that without cruise ship passengers, there would no longer be a Skagway. You can read much more detail about the history of Skagway here.
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White Pass & Yukon Railroad
Yukon Territory, Canada
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
AS YOU can see from the many photos here, we took the railroad trip. There are different iterations, but our involved riding the train up to Whitehorse, and then taking a bus back down, with a couple stops before being dropped of back by the cruise port. We stopped first at a "hokey," staged "camp" called Liarsville, where they performed a show with some folksy music. and let us "pan for gold." It was pretty fake and if lucky, you might get some gold flecks worth maybe pennies. I wouldn't recommend that you go out of your way to do this portion of your visit to Skagway.
THE SECOND stop (really our last) was more interesting, and involved a short, but personally narrated tour of the Red Onion Saloon. Wait. Tour of a Saloon? What could be that interesting about that? The Red Onion was not just a saloon, but was one of Alaska's most famous "Bordellos." Back during the gold rush. As I was doing some of my research, one commentator (unfortunately, I cannot remember the source to attribute it to - but it is sufficiently reminiscent of Mark Twain or Benjamin Franklin that I wouldn't be a bit surprised that what I read was not original either) said that during the Gold Rush there were two ways to get rich in Skagway: "work the goldmines or work the miners." Prostitution at the time was a booming vocation in Skagway. The Red Onion provided what they euphemistically called opportunities of "Negotiable Affection" in the upstairs area of the Saloon. What we saw was eye-opening. Rather than rooms, there were double-decker cubicles that were probably about 6 - 10 feet deep and not much higher or wider than that. They were referred to as "cribs," and our guide opined that it was the precursor of our current day use of the word "crib" to describe our own living quarters. Like all "legends," - maybe. 😉It's a good story anyway.
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The Red Onion Saloon - Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
FOLLOWING THE Red Onion tour, we found another saloon (or bar) that was just steps away from our boarding area for the Diamond Princess and in plain view. We had some time to kill before our all-aboard time, and it was a nice warm day (this was long before the days when we were routinely purchasing drink packages) and we decided to sit and have a drink or two. As time drew near we (perhaps unwittingly) started what might have become a "tradition" for us - last minute boarding. As we walked through the boarding gate, we heard one employee say to another, only two left (which meant we were almost the last on board). But on board we were, and it would be the last time our feet would be on terra firma until we disembarked from the ship a few days hence in Whittier.
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Skagway, Alaska
Copyright Andy Richards 2010 - All Rights Reserved |
