Sunday, May 29th
 |
| Reid Falls up from the Gold Rush Cemetary |
Had a bit of a lazy day today (or was it the beer hangover) and slept in. We then spent the day checking out this historic area. The National Park Service maintains parts of Skagway as the “Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Site” so we took a free one hour, ranger led downtown history walk and learned more. Skagway was founded in 1898 and grew very quickly as more than 40,000 gold seekers stampeded into town as they headed for the Klondike gold fields over 600 miles inland. The stories are incredible! They came here by ships, then had to pack one year’s worth of supplies (over a ton) on their backs over the White pass 36 miles to Bennet Lake, making as many as 20 to 30 trips to get it all. There, they would build boats while waiting for the frozen lake to thaw so they could paddle 70 miles across the lake and enter the Yukon river where 500 miles later they would have the chance to seek their fortunes finding gold.
We then went on another SDAT (Super Dave Adventure Tour) and drove a 10 mile narrow, winding dirt road to the ghost town of Dyea which was just down the coast. Dyea competed with Skagway for miners rushing to the Klondike and was the start of the famed Chilkoot trail. The town died quickly after the White Pass Railroad was built out of Skagway and now hardly a trace of a city that had over 10,000 people can be found.
 |
| SDAT road to the ghost town of Dyea |
 |
| The "Arctic Brotherhood Hall" is the most photographed building in Alaska |
that waterfall is almost pretty enough to change my opinion on them
ReplyDelete