Skagway: the gold rush continues in Alaska's Garden City - Port of the Month

Cruise Travel, May-June, 2003 by M.T. Schwartzman

It could be the 1920s: An old-fashioned bus pulls up, and a guide in period costume welcomes you to Skagway. As the bus leaves the dock and heads into town, it stops at the railroad tracks, where an iron locomotive is chugging along. Plumes of white vapor fill the air, and the blast of a steam whistle announces the train's departure. Continuing into town, the tour bus turns down the main drag, Broadway, where wooden sidewalks run alongside colorful false-front buildings. In what appears to be one big open-air museum, the pioneer days of Southeast Alaska have come back to life.

More than any other port along the Inside Passage, Skagway faithfully preserves and re-creates its colorful history to the delight of cruise passengers, who come here by the hundreds of thousands. On a busy day, up to four large ships and several small ships or ferries may be tied up at the docks, unloading some 8,000 cruise passengers into a city with a permanent population of about 800.

In fact, if it weren't for the cruise industry, Skagway probably would have faded into history a long time ago. The city was born of the rush for gold in the Klondike, just over the Coastal Mountains that separate Southeast Alaska from British Columbia and the Yukon. In the winter of 1897-1898, the town's population mushroomed to 20,000 practically overnight, and more than 80 saloons made this, in the words of Canadian Mountie Sam Steele, "the roughest place on earth."

After the stampede waned, Skagway became the birthplace of organized sightseeing in Alaska, when a gold-rush veteran named Martin Itjen started the original Skaguay Street Car in 1923. But the decline in mining made the city a shadow of its former self. The White Pass & Yukon Route, a narrow-gauge railway originally built to transport prospectors, continued to chug along until 1982, when it suspended operations due to rising costs and falling revenues. It reopened in 1988--this time as the excursion train we know today.

The gold rush centennial celebrations of the late 1990s renewed interest in Skagway, and ever since the town has been a staple on practically every Alaska cruise itinerary. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (comprising part of downtown Skagway) has surpassed Denali and Glacier Bay as the most-visited national park in Alaska, according to the National Park Service, due to the influx of cruise passengers.

Skagway is definitely place to sign up for a shore excursion, maybe more than one. The town offers some of the best tours in Alaska, including two all-time favorites: the Skagway Street Car Company and the White Pass & Yukon Route. First the street car: This option ($36) re-creates Martin Itjen's original tour. Guides in period costume relate the storied history of Skagway while taking in "all points of interest." Adding to the tour's authenticity is a recently acquired fleet of yellow-and-black antique sightseeing buses, which the company says are similar to those used in the '20s.

Itjen is buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery on the outskirts of town, one of the many stops along the route. The cemetery is an eerie reminder of Skagway's frontier origins. Although no one seems to know exactly how many people participated in the rush to the Klondike, researchers estimate that 100,000 to 200,000 set off for the goldfields, but only about 20,000 to 30,000 actually made it. A few of those whose journey ended in Skagway found their final resting place at the outskirts of town. Among them are two of Skagway's most colorful characters: infamous bad-guy Soapy Smith and hero Frank Reid, who dueled to the death in a storied gun fight on July 8, 1898, which ended Smith's reign of terror in gold-rush-era Skagway.

The White Pass & Yukon Route narrow-gauge railway ($95) is another genuine link to Skagway's past. The train follows the old "Trail of '98" and at certain points along the route, you can still see the path of the prospectors worn permanently into the mountainside. Railroad buffs will love this excursion, and fans of trivia will appreciate the following facts. When it was built, the WP&YR was the northernmost railroad in the Western Hemisphere. The White Pass also is one of North America's steepest railways, climbing 2,865 feet in 20 miles of track. In recognition of this achievement, the WP&YR was declared an international engineering landmark in 1994, putting it on a par with the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, and Panama Canal.

Outdoor adventure may be found in several active excursions; choosing one of these will depend upon your interests and fitness level. Cruise lines rate the degree of difficulty in their shore excursion booklets, so it's easy to make an appropriate choice. Options include mountain biking, kayaking, dogsledding, hiking, and horseback riding ($70 to $130), which may be packaged with helicopter flightseeing or the White Pass & Yukon Route for a two-in-one adventure (up to $300 or more).

Multi-generational cruise groups prefer tours that include panning for gold at the recreation of a turn-of-the-century trail camp ($48), or a visit to the Trail of '98 Museum and the "Days of '98" show ($35), which tells the story of Skagway in song and dance--it's been running for more than 75 years. If you've been to Skagway before, one of the newest excursions, "The Whitehorse Adventure" ($135) from the Skagway Street Car Company, takes travelers deeper into the Yukon than any other shore excursion. It's designed to appeal to passengers with an interest in pioneer history and "folks who grew up reading Jack London or Robert Service," according to the operator. The drive along the Klondike Highway passes through dramatic high-mountain scenery en route to Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon.