Skagway Historic District and White Pass | |
Alaska Heritage Resources Survey | |
Nearest city | Skagway, Alaska |
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Coordinates | 59°32′41″N135°12′29″W / 59.54476°N 135.20805°W Coordinates: 59°32′41″N135°12′29″W / 59.54476°N 135.20805°W |
Area | 3,140 acres (1,270 ha) |
Built | 1897 |
Part of | Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (ID76002189) |
NRHP reference No. | 66000943 [1] |
AHRS No. | SKG-013 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
Designated NHLD | June 13, 1962 [2] |
Designated CP | June 30, 1976 |
The Skagway Historic District and White Pass is a National Historic Landmark District encompassing a significant portion of the area within the United States associated with the Klondike Gold Rush. It includes the historic portion of Skagway, Alaska, including the entire road grid of the 1897 town, as well as the entire valley on the United States side of White Pass all the way to the Canada–US border. This area includes surviving fragments of three historic routes used during the Gold Rush, as well as the route of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad. [3] Almost 100 buildings remain from the Gold Rush period. Portions of the district are preserved as part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.
The Skagway portion of the district includes the historic heart of the town, a region 23 block long and varying in width from three to five blocks. Fourteen of these blocks were under National Park Service protection in 1999. [3] Buildings in the district are generally wood-frame structures with one or two stories, which have been brightly painted. Commercial buildings often have false fronts, commercial window displays, and recessed entries, and are sited directly against the sidewalk, while residences are set back. The district includes more than 350 buildings in Skagway, and only eight structures outside the city. [3]
The Arctic Brotherhood Hall (1899), its front covered with driftwood, is one of the contributing buildings.
The valley that rises steeply above Skagway was one of the main routes to the gold fields of the Yukon River. (The other, the Chilkoot Trail, is located west of Skagway, and is part of the National Historic Landmark Chilkoot Trail and Dyea Site historic district.) Two overland routes, the 1897 trail and the Brackett Wagon Road, worked their way up White Pass, as did a water-based route along the Skagway River, and the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, completed in 1900. Part of the valley now also carries the Klondike Highway. There are numerous areas along these historic routes (some of which have not been identified with precision, and may have followed variable routes during the rush) where camp sites and other remnants of the rush are to be found. [3]
Haines is a census-designated place located in Haines Borough, Alaska, United States. It is in the northern part of the Alaska Panhandle, near Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.
The Municipality and Borough of Skagway is a first-class borough in Alaska on the Alaska Panhandle. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,240, up from 968 in 2010. The population doubles in the summer tourist season in order to deal with more than 1,000,000 visitors each year. Incorporated as a borough on June 25, 2007, it was previously a city in the Skagway-Yakutat-Angoon Census Area. The most populated community is the census-designated place of Skagway.
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896; when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. It has been immortalized in films, literature, and photographs.
The White Pass and Yukon Route is a Canadian and U.S. Class III 3 ft narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other railroad. Equipment, freight and passengers are ferried by ship through the Port of Skagway, and via road through a few of the stops along its route.
The District of Alaska was the federal government’s designation for Alaska from May 17, 1884 to August 24, 1912, when it became Alaska Territory. Previously (1867–1884) it had been known as the Department of Alaska, a military designation.
The Chilkoot Trail is a 33-mile (53 km) trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, in the United States, to Bennett, British Columbia, in Canada.
Chilkoot Pass is a high mountain pass through the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains in the U.S. state of Alaska and British Columbia, Canada. It is the highest point along the Chilkoot Trail that leads from Dyea, Alaska to Bennett Lake, British Columbia. The Chilkoot Trail was long a route used by the Tlingit for trade.
Bennett Lake is a lake in the Province of British Columbia and Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada. It is just north of the border with the United States state of Alaska, near the Alaskan port of Skagway.
Bennett, British Columbia, Canada, is an abandoned town next to Bennett Lake and along Lindeman Creek. The townsite is now part of the Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site of Canada and is managed by Parks Canada. Bennett is also a stop on the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad during the summer months.
White Pass, also known as the Dead Horse Trail, is a mountain pass through the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains on the border of the U.S. state of Alaska and the province of British Columbia, Canada. It leads from Skagway, Alaska, to the chain of lakes at the headwaters of the Yukon River, Crater Lake, Lake Lindeman, and Bennett Lake.
Dyea is a former town in the U.S. state of Alaska. A few people live on individual small homesteads in the valley; however, it is largely abandoned. It is located at the convergence of the Taiya River and Taiya Inlet on the south side of the Chilkoot Pass within the limits of the Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska. During the Klondike Gold Rush prospectors disembarked at its port and used the Chilkoot Trail, a Tlingit trade route over the Coast Mountains, to begin their journey to the gold fields around Dawson City, Yukon, about 800 km (500 mi) away. Confidence man and crime boss Soapy Smith, famous for his underworld control of the neighboring town of Skagway in 1897–98 is believed to have had control of Dyea as well.
Lynn Canal is an inlet into the mainland of southeast Alaska.
The Dalton Trail is a trail that runs between Pyramid Harbor, west of Haines, Alaska in the United States, and Fort Selkirk, in the Yukon Territory of Canada, using the Chilkat Pass. It is 396 km (246 mi) long.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park is a national historical park operated by the National Park Service that seeks to commemorate the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. Though the gold fields that were the ultimate goal of the stampeders lay in the Yukon Territory, the park comprises staging areas for the trek there and the routes leading in its direction. There are four units, including three in Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska and a fourth in the Pioneer Square National Historic District in Seattle, Washington.
The Taiya River is a 17-mile-long (27 km) river in the U.S. state of Alaska running from the border with British Columbia, Canada, to the Taiya Inlet of upper Lynn Canal.
The Chilkoot Trail tramways were aerial tramways that played a significant role in the Klondike Gold Rush and the Chilkoot Trail as a transportation system to move prospectors and equipment towards the Dawson City/Klondike gold fields.
The Yukon Trail is a 1994 educational computer game from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), similar to their previous Oregon Trail series but set during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 19th century. Players start out in Seattle and must make decisions concerning supplies, a partner, and travel plans as they head to Alaska before boating down a river to Dawson City and staking a claim to mine for gold. The game features the famous author Jack London and authentic 19th-century photographs that show what life was like back then.
Steamboats on the Yukon River played a role in the development of Alaska and Yukon. Access to the interior of Alaska and Yukon was hindered by large mountains and distance, but the wide Yukon River provided a feasible route. The first steamers on the lower Yukon River were work boats for the Collins Overland Telegraph in 1866 or 1867, with a small steamer called Wilder. The mouth of the Yukon River is far to the west at St. Michael and a journey from Seattle or San Francisco covered some 4,000 miles (6,400 km).
Eric A. Hegg was a Swedish-American photographer who portrayed the people in Skagway, Bennett and Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush from 1897 to 1901. Hegg himself participated in prospecting expeditions with his brother and fellow Swedes while documenting the daily life and hardships of the gold diggers.
Lindeman Creek, formerly known as One Mile River connects Bennett Lake to Lindeman Lake, areas on the Chilkoot Trail in far northwestern British Columbia, Canada.