Page 26 - Skagway Virtual Guide

HISTORIC SKAGWAY
22
Photo by Kristy Wolgemuth
AN UNFORGETTABLE VISIT
We welcome you to take a walk or ride through streets with picturesque, false- fronted buildings and enjoy a community bursting with nature’s beauty and alive
with frontier freedom. Our pioneering spirit remains strong. Once you’ve joined us, you’ll be delighted by the unending variety of activities, events, shopping opportunities, side trips and modern accommodations waiting to make your visit unforgettable.
THE GOLD RUSH
Historic Skagway saw tens of thousands
of fortune-seeking prospectors during the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. Here, the stampeders piled off steamships, eager to head overland to the Yukon goldfields
on the White Pass Trail from Skagway or Chilkoot Trail from nearby Dyea. But before the lonely men could leave town, they faced the temptations of 80 saloons, the lure of painted ladies, and the quick fingers of gamblers and thieves such as Jefferson R. “Soapy” Smith and his ruthless gang.
Photo by Andrew Cremata
THE WHITE PASS & YUKON ROUTE
Foreseeing a lucrative future in the
Yukon, a group of British financiers began construction of the narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Route Railway in July
of 1898. Completed to Whitehorse in
1900, and connecting with a region-wide steamship navigation system, the White Pass Corporation began a transportation network in the North that remains to this day. Skagway boomed during the Gold Rush of 1898, but languished as the rush moved on to Nome in 1899. After the turn of the century many of the businesses moved their buildings from the avenues to front on Broadway and the tracks of the White Pass Railway. The town settled into its ultimate, but less dramatic role as the shipping port for the Yukon. Fire, the scourge of many historic Alaskan towns thankfully never ravaged downtown Skagway, leaving an authentic Gold Rush atmosphere.
SEE