Ho, for the Klondike!

When news of an extraordinary gold discovery in Canada's Yukon Territory reached the public in 1897, people across the globe raced to the Klondike hoping to become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Thousands boarded ships, steamed up Alaska's Inside Passage, and disembarked at Skagway or Dyea. Skagway's waterfront was a chaotic scene of pitched tents, shouting stampeders, neighing horses, and barking dogs, and streets were quickly laid out while buildings and wharves were constructed; the town even boasted of having electricity, telephone service, and running water in 1898. To reach the Klondike, stampeders had to choose between two routes: the 33-mile Chilkoot Trail out of Dyea, with a torturous thousand-foot climb known as the Golden Stairs, or the 45-mile White Pass Trail starting in Skagway, infamously named the Dead Horse Trail because pack animals perished in large numbers. Both trails met near Bennett, British Columbia, where many stampeders built or bought boats and waited for the ice to break up, then floated 550 miles through the lake systems and the Yukon River to reach Dawson City, Canada. Most stampeders never became rich, but they counted their trail experiences as life changing, and in the end the journey itself proved far more valuable than gold.

Skagway, Alaska · United States