Wednesday, Aug 14, 2024

We started this day a little later as we needed to sleep in.  I’m getting too old to stay up so late!!

Our dock was closed due to a HUGE rock slide, so they tendered us to shore.  We walked about 1/4 mile into Skagway and had perfect timing to see the movie about the Klondike Gold Rush starting in 1898.  I hate to admit I was pretty clueless about all that and was astonished to see what those stompers did to find gold. 

Each woman only made $1.50 out of each $5.00 John.  Women were not allowed to be miners, so they mined the men instead. 

We boarded our train around 4:00 p.m. and had no idea what to expect.  The round trip lasted about 2 and 1/2 hours and we saw some incredible scenery.

In 1896, the first gold was discovered in the Klondike.  In 1897,  Gold Rush fever struck, and tens of thousands of men and women steamed up the inside passage waterway and arrived in Skagway. 

The stompers had two ways to get to the gold.  They could take the shorter but steeper Chilkoot trail, or the longer but less steep White Pass trail.  Either way, once they got up this trail they still had 500 miles ahead of them before they would reach gold.  UNBELIEVABLE.

Pack horses could be utilized on the White Pass Trail, but 3000 horses died in the process. 

Two men met in Skagway and decided overnight that they could build a railroad over the White Pass trail.  And unbelievably, they completed the construction of the narrow gauge railroad in just a little over 2 years.  It cost 10 million dollars, tens of thousands of men, and 450 tons of explosives, in a VERY HARSH climate.

The scenery on this 40 mike trip to the summit is overwhelming and my photos do not do it justice. 

This summit is on the border of the US and Canada.  The Canadian government insisted that a stomper have a year’s worth of food before crossing into Canada.  Remember …. The gold is still 500 mi away from the border!  This meant that a man would have to go over this pass at least 50 times to carry enough food to complete that obligation. 

We didn’t get back to the ship until around 7:30.  We ate a nice dinner in the dining room, listened to a comedian in the theater, and went to bed.

We were overwhelmed.

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