Date: 5 July 2001 (Thursday)

Start: Pioneer RV Park, Whitehorse YT

End: Montana Services RV Park, Carcross YT (40 miles)

The temperature was 53f early and mostly cloudy this morning as we moved out of Whitehorse.

We ate breakfast in, hooked up, and drove off the big distance of 40 miles south on the South Klondike Highway. We watched for, and found, the Carcross Desert just before reaching Carcross. The desert is a 600-acre area where little grows; growth is inhibited by the sandy soil, the lack of rain, and a lot of wind in this small area.

At Carcross, we set up the little house in a gravel parking lot type of RV park (lots of these up here) behind the building.

The main building is also the store for the area, and the restaurant, and the liquor licensee (off premise only), and the laundromat. It’s also the gas station and video rental place.

The only available service here for the RV is electricity, so we filled the trailer’s water tank from the hose on the back of the building. Then we backed in to the (take your pick) slot and parked it, plugged it in and turned the refrigerator on to protect the food.

Then we dashed off southward. We’re doing the gold-rush "Trail of ‘98" in reverse as we do this. We passed the various lakes in the headwaters of the Yukon chain, but didn’t actually see Lake Bennett site where the stampeders built their boats in the snow; then they waited for the spring ice breakup to float down through Carcross to the Yukon to Dawson City and the gold (supposedly lying around for the picking up).

After seeing White Pass, we can begin to appreciate what they went through to get the required one ton off supplies over the pass to the lake. God, this is rough territory! The White Pass route was supposedly easier than the Chilkoot Pass route (the one you always see the picture off – with hundreds of people single file climbing with their packs up the ice steps). I can believe they did it, but it must have been so very hard.

The irony is that they were too late, all of them. The strike that started it was made in the late summer of 1896. A few trickled into the gold fields and claimed their part in the winter of 96-97. Other gold towns in the Yukon (Forty Mile, Circle) found themselves unpopulated in 1897 as the prospectors there headed for the Klondike. All the ground was claimed by mid-97, even as the word was getting out into the 48 states of the strike.

The Panic of ’93 (a financial depression) was still on, and this news struck the fancy of a lot of people. It is thought that a million people started for the Yukon, one hundred thousand actually made it to the west coast, that 40,000 made it to Dawson City. Also, that of those 40,000, some 4,000 got employment there, and 400 made enough money to consider themselves wealthy. It was pointed out today that those odds are still better than the lottery.

Anyway, we went down the pass, through US customs and immigration, into the US, and then into Skagway. As you pass down the streets toward the waterfront, you can see the huge cruise ship(s) in the distance overshadowing the town.

Three cruise ships were in town today including the Sun Princess and Volundam. The streets were jammed with passengers from those ships, as were all the shops that sell things to such people. The "business" district is maybe 8 short blocks long on one street, the old main street, Broadway.

The year-round population of Skagway is 850, supplemented in the summer by 500-600 more. Somehow, they manage to keep all the visitors busy. There are innumerable bus tours to the top of White Pass, in addition to the train trips on the old narrow-gage railroad, the White Pass & Yukon. There are tours over to the location of Skagway’s rival city, Dyea, the start of the Chilkoot Pass route. Dyea is no more – everything moved to Skagway when the railroad was completed in 1900.

After the rush of ’98, many of the hopefuls departed the Yukon, and others went to Nome to get in on the gold rush there. When the railroad went through to Whitehorse, it enabled regular trade with the gold area – goods were put onto paddlewheel steamboats at Whitehorse for Dawson. But that was only good when the river was open, so the Dawson warehouses were filled in the summer for the long winter.

The highway from Skagway to the Alaskan Highway near Whitehorse spelled the end of the railroad for freight hauling. The highway from Whitehorse to Dawson spelled the end of the steamboats.

Now, the railroad is a summer-only passenger operation. The fuel for the Yukon is transported by tanker trucks, some loaded at Skagway. You’d think there would be a more efficient method, but the population density of the Yukon is so low, there isn’t. The whole Yukon territory has fewer than 40,000 residents.

We had lunch in a cute sandwich shop. Then we went to the National Parks building, the original White Pass railroad depot, for orientation films and brochures, and a ranger-led walking tour. He pointed out many buildings still here from the gold rush period. The wind was blustery and downright cold, and the sky was entirely cloudy. I don’t know what the wind-chill factor was.

We wandered around and bought a few things. After a while, the number of people got to us and we left Skagway.

We went back up the hill, through Canadian customs, over the pass, back to Carcross and the little house in the parking lot. We looked at the max/min thermometer and found it never got into the 60’s here in Carcross. We made dinner and read for a bit, and relaxed.