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Thursday, May 26th starting mileage 8512. 71 degrees and sunny.
Got an early start as wanted to avoid the tours off the cruise ships. Parts of Skagway are administered by the National Park Service so we started in the old Train Depot for a city history tour led by a Park Ranger. There is a small museum in the depot and a topographic map of the two passes into the Yukon. When the gold seekers came by ship they had two options: dock at Dyea and take the Chilkoot pass or dock at Skagway and go up the White Pass. Early on, most used the steep stair step Chilkoot pass carrying a ton of food and supplies their backs. Usually they made 10 trips carrying 200 pounds each trip. The packs were so heavy they wore strap marks deep into the miners’ shoulders. They carried a year’s supply of food up because the Canadian Mounties would not let anyone in without that much in supplies.
White Pass was used a bit later and men dragged horses up the pass---so many horses died, they called it dead horse pass. Finally, a narrow gauge railroad was built up White Pass and
that killed the community of Dyea. Skagway survived as a town because other minerals were hauled out by rail after the gold played out. It was also used as a means to get supplies into the interior for the AlCan highway with 1000’s of men stationed there during WWII. Today, the town is 4 blocks wide and 24 streets deep from the harbor. If not for the tourists coming daily, this town would die also. The school has 71 elementary students to give you an example of its size.
After visiting the railroad station, we walked by several historical buildings to the Moore house that is open to show what a upper-class home was like at the turn of the 19th Century. A huge Bald Eagle circled us while we were at the home.
We walked back and got Rosie for a drive over the mountain about 11 miles to the National Park which incorporated the historic town of Dyea—at least we thought there was a reconstructed town there. We found a spot where the town was, but it is just back to the natural woods now. It was a pretty drive and the park was real nice—a
couple of our Trekkers were camped there.
Out in the mud flats we spotted 6-7 big blue herons. We didn’t realize herons flew this far north and questioned what our eyes were seeing. When we got into town we checked with a Park Ranger who confirmed that they come up this far north, but stay along the coast only.
We queued for the ferry to Haines. Rosie II got loaded on and we went upstairs to settle in for the 1 hour trip. 3 other Trekkers went with us on this leg of the trip and we were met by another at the dock in Haines. They had come over earlier, obviously, and had found a wide pull out area on a beautiful side estuary called Mud Bay. The 5 Roadtreks parked in a row and spent the night after sitting around a campfire visiting.
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