Canada/Alaska 2019-10: Skagway & Dyea, Alaska

July 31, 2019

Canada/Alaska 2019-10: Skagway & Dyea, Alaska

One of the major goals of our trip was for Doug to show me the places he'd been in 2017. We'd driven together from Whitehorse through Haines Junction in the Yukon past ranges of glaciated mountains and on to Haines, Alaska, where we spent a few days and took the fast ferry to Skagway and back. I flew home from Haines. Doug and the van took the ferry to Skagway, spent a couple of nights in Dyea, then drove from Skagway to Whitehorse.

The road from Whitehorse to Skagway, another gorgeous route, was new to me.

It passes from the Yukon to British Columbia to Alaska.

Glaciers left pond after pond...

...and sheer beauty.

In the mountains to the west is the Chilkoot Trail the Stampeders of 1898 took from Dyea (pronounced Dyee) en route to Dawson City, Yukon.

To the east is the White Pass Trail, purported to be easier as it allowed pack animals. Jack London dubbed it "Dead Horse Trail."

When we arrived at Skagway, situated at the end of Lynn Canal (a fjord), the usual cruise ships dwarfed the harbor: two "small," one ginormous, one "medium."

The town's population swells by at least 10,000 during the day, then returns to normal as the ships depart at night.

I tried throughout our stay to get the perfect picture of the glacier above Skagway's harbor, but it proved impossible to capture its blue hues. That guy in the foreground looks familiar....

Despite the tourists and the myriad shops set up just for them, Skagway retains its 19th century look, with wooden sidewalks...

...and old buildings refurbished for modern uses.

We liked the town's spires that served as guideposts of sorts.

We have yet to figure out why tourists from cruise ships so favor jewelry stores, but we did like the totem pole...

...but Doug did indulge in a new hat...

...and at $12.99, even I needed a powder blue fake suede jacket with fake lambs wool lining.

Skagway's first cabin was built in 1887, by William Moore, his son Ben, and Nan-Suk, a Tinglit, the native peoples of the region.

The Moores enlarged the dwelling over the years and eventually detached the original cabin.

Around 1899 Moore built a large house. He later sold it to Harriet Pullen, who turned it into "Alaska's finest hotel," complete with a tour bus. The building no longer exists.

Having participated in several gold rushes, Moore anticipated that Skagway would be the gateway to the next gold rush. To that end, he built a wharf and improved the White Pass Trail.

He did not anticipate, however, that Stampeders would overrun the town and his property. He joined the Nome gold rush in 1901, and in 1907, son Ben and his wife moved to Tacoma.

Other original buildings in Skagway await restoration.

After one night at the Skagway campground next to the harbor, we drove the ten miles along the Taiya River to Dyea.

Driving the dirt road in the rain did not contribute to the van's cleanliness. Doug likes his hat.

We camped four nights at the amazing free Dyea Flats Municipal Recreation Area, which has really nice gravel drives...

...metal tables on concrete pads, a fire pit, new outhouses with seat covers (!) and hand sanitizer...

...sites right on the river, and great neighbors! We spent a delightful evening with Michel (above, with Marilyn) and Marie-Ester from Québec, who have a navy blue van similar to ours, converted by New West of Québec.

The Taiya River regularly pulls trees from its banks.

Bald eagles observed from snags in the river.

Perched high in a tree in the old Dyea town site, this juvenile bald eagle was so large it was easily visible from a distance.

Situated on another inlet of the Lynn Canal, Dyea ("to pack") was established by the Tlingit long before the Klondike Gold Rush. They canoed to other villages on the Taiya and traveled to the interior on the Chilkoot Trail.

For a brief few years, up to 40,000 Klondikers came to Dyea, where the Tlingit village became a bustling town of 150 businesses to "mine the gold from[the Stampeders'] pockets." All of this deeply impacted the Tlingit way of life--and today nothing of the town remains but a few pieces of wood buildings.

Due to the mud flats, Klondikers used small boats to unload steamships and bring goods to shore. By the time a 2-mile long wharf to the bay was completed--all that remains are the piles--it was already obsolete, as the White Pass & Yukon Railroad was running from Skagway to Whitehorse.

Slide Cemetery contains the graves of about 70 Klondikers killed in the worst disaster of the Gold Rush, the Palm Sunday 1898 avalanche on the Chilkoot Trail. In 1979, the Dyea Town Cemetery was moved up the hill next to Slide Cemetery when the Taiya River threatened to erode it.