Skagway's place in history was established by the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush. It came into existence as one of the jumping off points to the gold fields on the Yukon River near Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada.
It's estimated that as many as 100,000 people left at least 38 different countries on the planet to strike it rich in the Klondike. At its peak, Dawson City, the center of gold fever, had a population of 40,000. Main Street included eighty saloons, along with a wide assortment of related frontier community establish- ments. Mining companies and resident prospectors had claimed all of the ore-rich sites long before most of the gold-seekers ever reached Dawson City. The vast majority never mined an ounce of gold. However, over the last 100 years, 12.5 million ounces of gold have been mined from this area. First reports of the Klondike gold strike were brought to the lower 48 by passengers on two ships months after the strike was actually made. One of them carried two tons of Alaska gold which created sensational headlines and helped to generate one of the most irrational gold fever incidents in history.
Skagway is now a town of just over 800 people. It is five blocks wide and 20 blocks long, confined by mountains and the bay. It is devoted almost exclusively to tourism. The day we were in Skagway there were four cruise ships the size of the Sapphire Princess anchored in Skagway Harbor. They could easily have brought 6000 people to town. On our walk up five blocks of the main commercial district, we counted 28 jewelry stores. And there were that many more that probably sold jewelry as well as other products.
The old Cadillac and the horse and buggy are just a few of the ways that Skagway caters to tourists. The red snowblower was used to clear rail tracks during winter in an earlier era. It was steam-powered. The building, now the Skagway City Tourist Information Center, is sided with driftwood, none of which exceeds three inches in diameter.
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