Skulking Around Skagway - And Avoiding the Hordes of Cruise Ship Tourists!

We are from Skagway.  Our grandfathers and grandmothers

 are our Ancestors who have gone on and we call them Haa Shagoon.  

It is from ages past that they have called this land Lkoot Aani (Chilkoot).  

That is how we know it today.  The names of our land are 

Shgagwei (Skagway), Naxlew (Naakhu Bay), and Deiyda (Dyea).  

We who now walk this land seek to learn the ways of our Ancestors, 

to live in harmony and balance on this land.  

We have always had respect for each other through our culture.  

Watch carefully over the land of our grandparents.

We arrived in Skagway, Alaska on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, having driven down the South Klondike Highway from Whitehorse.  Skagway has a storied past, much of which is related in our other blogs on other parts of this trip.  But, in a nutshell, it was the hopping-off point for Yukon Stampeders who sailed on ships to this port, and then trekked 500 miles up to Dawson City, Yukon, to try and stake a claim to gold.  Today, the gold is found in the thousands of tourists that arrive on cruise ships to tour this piece of living history.

Much of Skagway is part of the Yukon Gold Rush National Historic Site, and many of the historic buildings are owned by the National Park Service.  The permanent population of the town is about 1,000.  More than one million tourists visit the town each season.

Here was our first view of the town, and, of course, the cruise ships dominate the view beyond the town:

Skagway is the terminus of the White Pass & Yukon Railway, which historically carried prospectors and others to Whitehorse for commercial purposes, but today only carries tourists as far as Carcross. The narrow gauge railway provides a very popular and scenic ride over the White Pass and into British Columbia and the Yukon.

Here is a view of Skagway and its railway station from the docks, with mountains presiding in the background:

The cruise ships are huge and omnipresent:

We stayed in a small, historic bed & breakfast called "At the White House."  It is a charming turn-of-the-century house located a short walk from the center of town.

In addition to its historic attractions, Skagway is also home to Skagway Brewing Company, and we made haste there to sample what they had on tap, as soon as we finished our visit to the Visitor Center for the Yukon Gold Rush National Historic Site.  Here's Kathy comparing beer tasting notes with the bartender:

There are over 100 historic buildings in the town, and it's hard to choose which is the most interesting.  Just arbitrarily, we'll point out that this old building, the home of Kirmse's Curios --

-- has a friendly echo up on the cliffside above town, where the original Kirmse's carved an advertisement alongside those of other town merchants:

Perhaps the most unique establishment in Skagway is the Red Onion Saloon which, in addition to its expected history of bawd and bodaciousness, boasts a ghost, Lydia, one of the ladies of negotiable virtue who is said to have worked upstairs in the brothel, who is said to have hanged herself because she was let go due to having contracted syphilis.  According to some accounts, she might have been murdered by the bouncer, but that is pure speculation.  In any event, some attest to having seen her ghost upstairs.

Here is the corner of one of the upstairs rooms where some have seen apparitions attributed to Lydia:

We took the brothel tour and we confess we didn't see any ghosts.  However, we did have a bodacious - if not bawdy - time, and enjoyed the repartee of our guide.

On a more modern side, the town has taken some pains to improve itself.  There is a beautiful park with lagoon and walking paths, which creates a transition between the historic downtown and the bustling, modern port:

We learned on arrival that the cruise ships disgorge their passengers around 8:00 each morning, and mandate that the tourists be back aboard by anytime between 6:00 and 8:00 in the evening. Consequently, we confined most of our touring to the very early morning, and to the evening around dinner time.  Without the cruise ship crowds, the town is positively quaint and calm and beautiful.