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Musings From Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park

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Downtown Skagway, Alaska, and Klondike Goldrush National Historical Park/LDalton

Downtown Skagway can appear deserted...until the cruise ships unload their thousands of visitors/Lee Dalton

I had completely forgotten that Skagway is home to a unit of Klondike Gold Rush before I got off the Alaska Marine Highway ferry M.V. Columbia at the pier in Skagway, Alaska. But there it was right on Main Street – a big Arrowhead outside a large old building labeled "Visitor Center."

Did you know that Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park’s Skagway unit is one of the most heavily visited places in the entire national park system?

I didn’t. But it didn’t take long to find out why.

As for Skagway itself, the only way I can describe the town is to say I was absolutely underwhelmed. The entire place – with exception of the many National Park Service buildings that are nearly empty of visitors scattered around here and there – is one tawdry and atrocious tourist trap that makes even the old days of West Yellowstone or Keystone, South Dakota, look good by comparison.

The Park Service has recreated an old saloon, for example. There were only about four other people in there. The Junior Ranger building had maybe two kids and their parents. The most popular by far was the main visitor center -- where the restrooms were located.

I’ve also never seen so many “jewelry” stores in one small place in my life. I never did figure out why they infest the town. Maybe because of the word “Gold” in the story of the Alaska Gold Rush of 1879 - 93. But none of them seem to be selling gold. Instead, they offer incredible 50 percent off deals on something called Tanzanite.

Skagway’s entire economy hangs on hoards of passengers from monstrous cruise ships that dock there every day. As many as seven ships a day disgorge an average of 2,500 souvenir-starved tourists every morning. It’s absolutely safe to say that at least 98.6 percent of them have never heard of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, and most have probably spent their lives believing that a Klondike is something that holds water back from the North Sea around Holland.

There’s a building up the street that houses the park’s Junior Ranger program. One family stood patiently by as the ranger signed off some requirements in their daughter’s book. But I heard another father tell his son, “Come on, we don’t have time for this.”

It became very obvious in just a few minutes that the most important function of the park is that it actually has restrooms. As I waited in line for my turn a few people around me actually spent some time looking at a display or two. But most conversations seemed to revolve around some shipboard subject or tactical planning for the afternoon’s attack on Skagway’s stores.

“Oh, where did you find that cute stuffed moose? I want one for my granddaughter.”

There were frequent reminders passed back and forth: “Don’t forget, we have to be back aboard no later than two.” “You don’t think they’d really leave us, do you?”

Cruise ship at Skagway, Alaska/LDalton

Cruise ships are the lifeblood of Skagway/Lee Dalton


Across the street from the nearly empty park visitor center (except for the restroom line, that is) the ticket office at the Red Onion Bordello seemed to be doing booming business with its Red Light tours. I don’t think that’s an NPS interpretive feature.

Come suppertime, the town was almost completely empty.

I noticed a flyer in one of the Park Service buildings advertising a special evening program about monitoring efforts involving a critter called a Boreal Toad. So after a hurried supper, I dashed to the main visitor center. There I found a small group of people and a young bio tech named Shelby Surdyk. Shelby, it seems, had actually grown up in Skagway and now wears green and gray with an Arrowhead on her sleeve. Among other duties, she catches toads and attaches radio tracking gizmos to them.

She told the audience, who were mostly local folks including her mother and grandmother, about how her third-grade teacher, Ms. Caposy, had brought a little toad to school one day. That teacher and that toad had caught Shelby’s interest. One thing led to another and here she was this night reporting on what she was still learning from that little toad’s relatives.

Ranger talk around map of Klondike Goldrush/Lee Dalton

Awaiting cruise ship passengers are fascinating stories about the Klondike Gold Rush. Ranger Shelby Butters provided some insights during a talk at the visitor center/Lee Dalton

The toads, she explained, are an important indicator of the health of an area’s ecosystems. Her grandmother recalled ponds covered with toad eggs and water filled with tadpoles. Shelby and her brother played with the toads and tadpoles and now, because of habitat encroachment and other factors that are only partly understood, there are very few left in the ponds around Skagway. Yet just a short distance away in a place called Dyea, they still thrive.

She told us of a fungus called Chytrid (kit-rid) that is a world-wide threat to toads of all kinds. And she wove the old story of natural interconnectedness and the threads that bind all of us — humans and toads alike — together into one complex and endless tapestry that we seem unable, or unwilling, to comprehend.

A highlight of her talk came when one of a group of little boys in the front row raised his hand and told us that just the other day, Ms. Caposy had brought a salamander to school. It seems that an apparently gifted teacher is still at it. D’ya think it’s possible that some day that little boy might wear an Arrowhead, too?

After a comfortable night in the Sergeant Preston Lodge (you have to be an old timer to appreciate that name), I was up early to kill some breakfast. Skagway’s streets were bare as I sat down to eat. But before I had finished I began to feel a rumbling beneath the floor and water in my glass began to ripple. I asked the server if we were having an earthquake. “No,” she replied. “That’s just the morning stampede off the ships that docked last night.” (I swear that’s true, and if you believe it, I’ll tell you another story. Just like a politician, ya?) When I stepped outside a few minutes later I was almost swept away by a human tsunami.

The rest of the morning was spent on a rainy ride up to White Pass on the White Pass & Yukon Railroad. It was interesting and scenic, but the Durango-Silverton ride in Colorado beats it by a long shot. A few afternoon minutes were spent listening as a young ranger named Shelby Butters told a small gathering of visitors around a relief map near the restrooms in the visitor center the story of the Klondike Stampede and explained why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police set up a weigh station at the top of the pass. They required that anyone entering Canada in search of gold have at least one ton of food and other necessary supplies with them.

But then, after another hour or so of wandering around Skagway where one highlight was a stop at a small city museum tucked away on a back street, I got tired of crowds of gabbling souvenir seekers and headed to the airport to wait a couple of hours for my flight to Gustavus and Glacier Bay.

Whitehorse and Yukon Railroad/Lee Dalton

The White Pass and Yukon Railroad offers a trip through the countryside for visitors to Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park/Lee Dalton

All in all, I guess about all I can say about Skagway and Klondike is this: Klondike Goldrush stands as a shining testament to the dedication of our Park Service rangers. It must be frustrating as all get out to be sitting on top of such a potentially fascinating story while watching so many herds of scurrying tourists swarming by without stopping or caring.

Then again, maybe the rewards of catching the interest of the few who do just might make it all worthwhile.

Kind of like a third grade teacher in a tiny Alaska town who caught the interest of Shelby Surdyk and those little boys in the front row of Shelby’s toad talk or the rangers who ask a little girl or boy to raise a hand to recite the Junior Ranger Promise.

Who can ever know where their influence might lead?

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It sounds like Skagway has changed drastically since I was last there in 1973, before the Klondike National Historic Site even existed.  I'm sorry to hear it.  The trip we made that year piqued my interest in the gold rush, and, forty years later, I wound up writing a novel set in that time and place.


I'm sincerely curious, Mega, what was it like then?

 


Lee - I wish I'd still been there to buy you  cuppa, but I left the end of July for NOCA.

 

Unfortunately, much of your surface impression of Skagway is pretty close to reality. During the years I was driving a tour bus I got the biggest cheers from my passengers when I said, "Folks ask me what all these jewelry stores have to do with the gold rush and Alaska. They have NOTHING to do with the gold rush or Alaska."

 

That said, there is a lot of nature and natural beauty in and around Skagway. Orca and humpbacks in the harbor and canal, a salmon run in streams right through the middle of town, the Dyea unit of the NPS, mountains and glaciers in every direction - it was a marvelous experience to live there for the past five years.

 

I'm very glad you made positive mention of several locals. Denise Caposy is a wonderful teacher in the Skagway K-12 school and Shelby Surdyk is a brilliant young lady with a bright future in front of her.


Yes, Rick, I knew you were going to be gone.  Otherwise I'd have hunted you down.  Sure would be fun to meet you in person.

Someone told me that probably ninety percent of Skagway's summer population is seasonal and will be gone much of the year.  Most of the stores will close and their proprieters will probably be leaving right about now.  A local man with whom I spoke said something like, "They come to make a few bucks.  Then they take the bucks and go somewhere else."  While I'm certain there are a lot of good, honest, hard-working people up there both permanently and seasonally, and the scenery and nature are spectacular, it seems a shame that somewhere along the line something important was missed.

In a few conversations with locals I gathered that they would much rather things were different.  I suspect that all this came about as almost a tsunami of change for which no one was really prepared.  Am I correct in thinking that changes came very rapidly up there and local people may have been caught by surprise?

Perhaps my perceptions were also colored by the herds of tourists (I won't use the more dignified "visitors" regarding cruise ship passengers). 

There were pockets of refreshing contrasts to the tourist trap atmosphere.  The Sgt. Preston Lodge, for example.  Clean, comfortable and run by some very friendly local people.  The city museum tucked away beside the railroad tracks on a side street.  The little eatery where the fella talked me into trying a caribou burger.

Unfortunately, for me though, much of that was cancelled by the two people who accosted me on the street and tried to sell me tickets for some theater performance or the one who shoved a fur of some kind at me and told me to feel it because I'd surely want one to take home.  (I really think it was fake fur, too.)

I know I wasn't alone in some of my impressions.  Some comments from others waiting at the airport indicated I wasn't the only one there seeking refuge from the madding crowds.  I really took my hat off to the family from New York that had just finished backpacking the trail in from Canada and were flying out to return home.  Two young boys there who were tuckered out from what must have been an incredible experience in one of our national parks.  They talked of the grizzly they'd encountered.  An experience that certainly made a much more valuable souvenir that a hunk of fake fur or a piece of Tanzanite from Africa.

So, Rick, was I right or wrong?

 


Lee - you're right, of course, but there is a lot more there for those who persevere to avoid the traps.
I've got a wonky connection tonight and this is the fourth time I've tried to reply to you.
The approximate demographics are 600-800 year around residents, around 2000 seasonal rangers, baristas, and tshirt salesmen, ships the first of May through the end of September with only a couple of no-ship days, 3-4 ships most days, and upwards of 10,000 visitors on the busiest days. I don't know how sudden this has all happened - the park dates back to the early 70's, and the cruise ships predate the park.
Yeah - a lot of folks are on a ship for a week, get off in town and buy expensive cheap jewelry and baseball caps, and ask silly questions. I figure I did my job right if I showed the occasional someone a glacier and showed them how rapidly it was disappearing, or helped them to find the fish ladder that moved the salmon up into the streams through town, or helped them to grasp what an inhuman task it was for the guys in 1897 to get that ton of goods up and over the pass... and the folks who would 'get it' were generally the folks that a couple of years later came back up to visit, withOUT the cruise ships, to take a bigger bite out of the experience.


Thanks, Rick.  This was my first experience in Alaska and even with Skagway, it was incredibly astonishing.  I want very much to return soon.  When I do, I may even include Skagway and may stay longer than just 24 hours.  I didn't make it to Dyea, I didn't go looking for Orcas or humpbacks or salmon, I didn't do any real hiking, and honestly, I didn't really carefully explore all the NPS may offer in town and the surrounding country.  I guess it's just that I was caught so much by surprise when I discovered that the West Yellowstain of the 1960's had migrated north.

But a trip to Glacier Bay via the Alaska ferry wouldn't be the same without the flight from Skagway to Gustavus.  That's something I could do every day and never tire of it.


We did the bush plane flight 'over the top' when we went to Gustavus a few months ago, and everything about the trip was wonderful. Glad you got some of the fever.


Well, as a journalist, I found your story about the town I lived in and was the town's editor for six years, snarky and missing of come important history. Skagway has always been a town where people come off of boats in droves, if as a Parkie you know the town's history. During the gold ruch toruists came to just watch the stampede, and yes, ride the train. Townies treasure those days when there are not a lot of people town. And you only took the train to the summit and missed Lake Benet and Carcross. I don't see how you can just trash a town that's gone thorugh boom and busts for the last century and slam it because its economy is doing so well that it's taxes are low and if you're 65 or older your real estate taxes are fogiven to $250,000. There was the renovation of city hall and the main streets were unpaved until the late 80's -- side streets got paved in 1998. Do try and be more gracious in your reviews because I don't understand why you review parks if you don't take the time to learn the entire story.


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