Alaska
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Skagway was the gateway to the Klondike during the gold rush of 1898. Thousands of fortune-seekers made their way to this lawless frontier town to stage their trek up over the mountains and into the Yukon to find gold. The Canadian government required that each person have a year's worth of provisions before they would grant permission to enter the Yukon Territory. Skagway was the base for gathering those provisions. Each gold seeker had to hawl all that up over the mountains and then float it another 1,000 miles down the rivers into the Klondike. The statue at the left is in memory of those who made the portage. Hats off to the hikers! We enjoyed this town more than Juneau. It is a one-street town and has about 800 residents. Thats more like it. We took the White Pass and Yukon narrow gage train up over White Pass. This path was used by about a third of the gold rushers. It was more rugged, but was shorter than the Chilkoot trail. The train was a historical trip back in time. The historian on board told us all the tales and described the different parts of the trail. We transfered to a bus and arrived that evening at Whitehorse, Canada - another gold boom town. The photograph to the left shows a calm river cutting throught the thick forests. But in 1898, the river hadn't been dammed up yet, and the rapids in this area were trecherous. Alot of supplies were lost here and later reclaimed downstream by opportunists. Hey, business is business! Later in the evening, we took in a local play about the gold rush. It was vaudeville and was great fun for ten whole dollars (Canadian)! The next day, we were off to Anchorage by air. We flew on a Convair 560 turboprop. It was a little over an hour trip over mountains, glaciers, trees and ... NOTHING ELSE. There is nothing else up there! The state of Alaska has about 600,000 residents and half of them live in Anchorage. Get this - if you fold Alaska in half, it is still bigger than Texas. So there is lots of space and not many people. Its a wilderness and its beautiful! Next Page |