Skagway

The routes from the head of Taiya Inlet over the coastal mountains were Tlingit trade paths to the interior long before the gold rush. In 1887 Captain William Moore and his son claimed a 160-acre homestead at the mouth of the Skagway River, and the same year Moore investigated the pass behind it, later known as the White Pass. Ten years later, after news of the Klondike strike reached Seattle in July 1897, thousands of stampeders landed on the beach, pushed Moore aside and built a town of tents and saloons almost overnight.

Skagway and its rival Dyea were the two starting points for the trek to the gold fields: the White Pass from Skagway, the Chilkoot Pass from Dyea. For a few months in 1898 the town was largely run by the con man Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith and his gang, until he was shot dead on the Juneau Wharf in July 1898 in a gunfight with Frank Reid, who died of his own wounds days later. The White Pass and Yukon Route railway, finished to Whitehorse in 1900, gave Skagway a lasting role as the rush faded and Dyea was abandoned.

For most of the 20th century Skagway was a railway and port town. The line closed in 1982, when Yukon mining slumped, and reopened in 1988 for tourist trains. The Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park was created in 1976, and its restoration of the downtown buildings, together with the growth of Inside Passage cruising, turned Skagway into one of the busiest summer stops in Alaska.

Skagway's identity rests on the gold rush, and the town tells the story constantly — in park ranger walks, saloon tours and the legend of Soapy Smith, whose death is still marked locally each July. Much of the downtown is owned and restored by the National Park Service, so the look of 1898, with false-fronted buildings and boardwalks, is preserved by law rather than staged.

Behind the tourist face is a tight community of about a thousand people who share the outdoors: hiking the trails above town and taking boats out on the Lynn Canal. Many residents are seasonal workers who come for the summer, and the town's mood changes sharply when the last cruise ship leaves in autumn and the population settles back to its year-round core.

Skagway also looks north as much as south. The road to Whitehorse makes it closer in daily life to the Yukon than to Juneau, which cannot be reached by road, and Canadians drive down for the sea air, the shops and the port. The Tlingit history of the Chilkoot route and the human cost of the gold rush, which disrupted Native trade and land, are part of how the story is told today.

About 1,200 people live in the Municipality and Borough of Skagway, and almost all of them live in the town itself, on a narrow valley floor between steep mountains. The population roughly doubles in summer with seasonal workers who staff shops, tours, the railway and restaurants, and on a busy day the cruise ships bring several times the town's own population ashore.

Tourism is by far the main industry: the railway, the National Park Service, tour operators and the shops on Broadway employ most people. The White Pass railway also carries copper ore from the interior, and the road and ferry links make the town a supply point for travellers heading north. Winter is long and quiet, many businesses close, and those who stay rely on a small school, a clinic, a few shops and each other.

Current debates centre on how many cruise passengers the town can handle and the cost and difficulty of housing seasonal workers in a valley with very little flat land.

Skagway's food is the food of Southeast Alaska: salmon, halibut and crab caught in the surrounding waters, eaten as fish and chips, grilled fillets, chowder or smoked strips. Halibut and chips is the standard order on Broadway in summer, and Dungeness and king crab appear on most menus during the season.

The gold rush left its own traditions. Sourdough bread and pancakes recall the prospectors who carried their starter over the passes, and old-timers in Alaska are still called sourdoughs. The starter was favoured because yeast and baking soda were much less reliable in the conditions the prospectors faced. Wild berries from the hills are turned into jams, pies and syrups.

Because almost everything else comes up by barge or down the highway from Whitehorse, meals in the town are simple and seasonal, and many restaurants close for the winter. The saloons on Broadway keep the atmosphere of 1898, while a few cafés and bakeries cater to the residents and the summer workers.