Skagway, Alaska
We cheated. Over 100 years ago the stampeders chased their dreams up and over the Chilkoot and White Passes, in what was for most of them, a futile search for the Bonanza gold. Today we simply took the train up the Skagway River Valley to the 2885 foot White Pass. But, what a ride it was. From Skagway we chugged from ocean to alpine, from hemlock to krumholtz. But it was the gorge views that knocked my socks off. As if on a high wire, the train crept along the narrow gauge rails. When we weren’t peering straight down to the rushing Skagway River, we were reveling in the fireweed, hare bells, yarrow and vermilion clusters of western mountain ash berries.
In 1887, William Ogilvie, a Canadian government surveyor, was ordered to survey this area and fix the boundary between Canada and the United States. He was accompanied by William Moore, a steamboat captain whom later persuaded Ogilvie to let him explore an alternate route to the Chilkoot Trail through the rugged Coast Mountains. Moore surveyed the route and named the pass after Sir Thomas White, the Canadian Minister of the Interior. The tracks for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad reached White Pass on February 20, 1899. Soon after that the dream was over and the gold was claimed. This railroad is the first in Alaska, and the northernmost railroad in the Western Hemisphere. Along with the Eiffel Tower and the Panama Canal it is one of 34 International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks in the world.
We cheated. Over 100 years ago the stampeders chased their dreams up and over the Chilkoot and White Passes, in what was for most of them, a futile search for the Bonanza gold. Today we simply took the train up the Skagway River Valley to the 2885 foot White Pass. But, what a ride it was. From Skagway we chugged from ocean to alpine, from hemlock to krumholtz. But it was the gorge views that knocked my socks off. As if on a high wire, the train crept along the narrow gauge rails. When we weren’t peering straight down to the rushing Skagway River, we were reveling in the fireweed, hare bells, yarrow and vermilion clusters of western mountain ash berries.
In 1887, William Ogilvie, a Canadian government surveyor, was ordered to survey this area and fix the boundary between Canada and the United States. He was accompanied by William Moore, a steamboat captain whom later persuaded Ogilvie to let him explore an alternate route to the Chilkoot Trail through the rugged Coast Mountains. Moore surveyed the route and named the pass after Sir Thomas White, the Canadian Minister of the Interior. The tracks for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad reached White Pass on February 20, 1899. Soon after that the dream was over and the gold was claimed. This railroad is the first in Alaska, and the northernmost railroad in the Western Hemisphere. Along with the Eiffel Tower and the Panama Canal it is one of 34 International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks in the world.
