July 17 – We had to catch a 7am ferry
from Juneau up to Skagway. The posted check in time was 5am. Dave had
dutifully set the alarm clock for 4:03 to give us enough time to finish
breaking down camp. Dave awoke at 4:55am to discover that he had set the clock
for 4:03 pm. We then proceeded to break all speed records for camp break down
– we were in the truck ready to go in under 20 minutes (granted Stacie still
had to do her hair). At 5:25 we were at the dock and the ferry hadn’t even
arrived yet. At the ferry office and were given our loading card for the truck
and told to wait in lane 8. We were the only vehicle in lane 8. The ferry
arrived at 5:45 and was unloaded by 6:05. Rather than start loading the ferry
after it was emptied, the crew disappeared and didn’t return to start loading
until 6:40. At 6:55 we were still sitting in lane 8. The loading process was
going slowly, especially since they would keep stopping the flow of vehicles to
let a forklift get by to take dumpsters off the ferry. At 7:00 the large
truck next to us in lane 9 was signaled to go on. We took this as a good sign
since that left about 20 cars, 2 more trucks and a tour bus. Well, the truck
pulled on to the ferry and then turned so that it was blocking the ramp. The
forklift then started unloading the entire truck – it was the supply truck for
the cafeteria. The truck pulled off the ferry ten minutes later and the crew
quickly sent the bus on, followed by all of the remaining cars. We were parked
behind the bus and there were several cars behind us. The ferry departed 25
minutes late.
The next stop was Haines, about 4 hours away.
On the way we sighted a few whales (one humpback and two orcas), a sea lion on
a buoy and Dave saw some porpoises. We were also treated to two lighthouses –
Sentinel Island (left) and then Eldred Rock (below). There were a lot of
hikers on the boat and there was a line for showers so Dave decided to wait
until we were docked in Haines to take his shower. We actually arrived in
Haines on time and Dave headed for the showers as the Purser made the “you may
go to you cars” announcement. The Purser also made an announcement to tell the
nine drivers of vehicles that were loaded as stand-bys to go to their vehicles
as they had to be moved. As Dave started shaving the Purser again made an
announcement telling drivers who were told that they would have to move their
vehicles in Haines to immediately go to the car deck. Two minutes later the
Purser described a vehicle and ordered the driver to report to the car deck,
“You’re holding up the unloading process”. A minute later the Purser described
another car, then another, then another (in the background you could here
someone on the radio saying, “oh, here’s another one”). Finally the Purser
gave up and announced that all drivers of all vehicles had to report to the car
deck. Earlier in the voyage Stacie had bought an ‘I drove the Alaska Marine
Highway’ pin and Dave had joked that he was going to make her drive the truck
off the ferry so that she could honestly say she had driven (Dave has always
drove the truck on and off because there’s a lot of maneuvering and you have to
back off the ferry). Dave considered ignoring the announcement and forcing
Stacie to be the driver, but neither one of us knew what the other was going to
do so we both went down. When Dave arrived at the truck, he found Stacie there
explaining to the deck hand that no one had told us we had to move. The
deckhand responded, “oh, that explains this mess”. Dave got in the truck and 5
minutes later was backing off the ferry, along with 17 other cars and one truck
who were all sent to purgatory in lane 6. As it turns out, in their rush to
get everyone on when loading, someone failed to notice that the tour bus was
bound for Haines, not Skagway and they buried the bus in the middle of the
Skagway section. After the bus finished all of its maneuvering they started
loading from lane one. Forty five minutes after pulling off, Dave got back on
the ferry and headed for the shower. While showering Dave felt the ferry lurch
a few times and figured we were on our way. He was quite surprised when he
found the boat still at the dock as he emerged from the bathroom. It was now
Stacie’s turn to shower, so Dave stayed with our stuff and Stacie went down to
cleanse herself. While waiting, Dave watched the chaos at the loading ramp.
There had only been a few cars and RV’s left when he loaded the truck, so they
should have been finished. It appeared that the only vehicle left was a
massive RV (tour bus sized) and it was towing a jeep on a trailer. It pulled
down the ramp and then stopped halfway on the ferry. After a few minutes it
backed off the ferry (quite a feat since it had a trailer). The driver got out
and huddled with several ferry people and then unloaded the jeep from the
trailer and unhooked the trailer from the RV. He then drove the liberated RV
onto the ferry and ran back up the ramp to hook his jeep and up to its trailer
and drive them on. We then were able to depart, fifty five minutes late
(Stacie returned from her shower just after cast off). Apparently no one had
the foresight to leave enough room for this RV even though they had virtually
cleared the car deck in their efforts to get the bus off. We had an uneventful
sailing and arrived in Skagway just over an hour later and still quite behind
schedule (lucky for the ferry this was the end of the line and it didn’t have
to leave for several hours).
Finally in Skagway, we drove through town and looked at the RV parks in horror – all four of them were wall to wall RV’s with nary a tree in sight. We were planning on using a campground outside of town, but these places were out back up plan in case they campground was full. Luckily, there were plenty of sites available in the campground and we were able to find an isolated one about 75 feet away from the drive (although due to the terrain we had to roll the cabinets over 400 feet to get there). After we were done setting up, there was still time before it got dark (actually there’s always time ‘til it gets dark) so we got the bikes out and rode over to the Dyea townsite, next to the campground.
We had no idea what Dyea was (other than the
name of our campground), but we got quite an education at the townsite (or
at least what was left of it). Most people it seems have heard of Skagway, the
home of the White Pass & Yukon Route railroad, the place where the great
gold rush of 1897-8 started, the start of the famous White Pass trail that all
the stampeders took, but no one has heard of Dyea, a town that was bigger than
Skagway and had another route to Yukon gold – the Chilkoot trail. Today
Skagway has around 700 full time residents and a plethora of seasonal residents
to serve the tourist trade and Dyea, only three miles away is nothing but
forest and a few foundations. While Dyea had the easier route (shorter and
less elevation) to the Yukon, it was Skagway that ultimately succeeded as a
town (Dyea only lasted about 5 years). We biked along the trails through the
old townsite and also visited the Slide Cemetery where most of the victims of
an avalanche that killed over 70 people on the Chilkoot Trail are buried. We
wanted to learn more about Dyea and decided that we would go a ranger guided
hike of the townsite while we were in the area.
July 18 – Once again we were looking at
excellent weather. It was clear and the forecasters were expecting
temperatures near 70. Even better there was only on ship scheduled to be in
town. We arrived in town and easily found a parking spot near the train
station. Our first stop was a giant rotary snow plow that was on
display near the station. Built over 100 years ago, the plow can cut through
drifts 12 feet high and it is still used each spring to clear the tracks. Next
we went to the Park Service’s visitor’s center and signed up for a walking tour
of the town. We met ranger Ken for the tour which ambled up the main street of
town stopping along the way for some history and some stories. Afterwards we
saw a film on the evolution of Skagway.
As we mentioned earlier, gold rushers had a
choice between the two trails and hence Skagway and Dyea developed at the
foot of each trail. Each city was in competition with the other to lure the
miners (and their money). While the trail out of Skagway was longer and
higher, it was served by a deep water (over 500 feet deep) port and it was much
easier to dock ships there than at Dyea where there were 2 miles of tidal flats
to be crossed to get to deep water (miner’s goods were usually dropped off at
low tide onto the mud flats and then the miners had to scramble to move it all
before the tide
came in). Skagway was also the older town, founded a few
years before the gold rush by Captain William Moore who had the foresight to
realize that someday there would be a need for a route into Canada and that he
could profit from creating a town at the head of the trail (Dyea was a seasonal
Indian settlement at the time). Preparing for the day that people would come to
his town Moore built a sawmill, a large dock to accommodate ships and a small
log cabin for himself. Dyea had the advantage that its trail was a long
established Indian trading route that was fairly well known by explorers.
Initially Dyea was the more successful of the towns, overcoming the harbor
problem by building a 2 mile long dock out over the mud flats to make unloading
easier. There is a famous picture from the gold rush showing hundreds of
climbers one after another on a stairway carved into the ice – this was the
‘golden staircase’ on the Chilkoot (Dyea’s) Trail. On April 3, 1898 there was
the massive avalanche elsewhere on the trail that killed over 70 stampeders.
Many people say that the next day everyone waiting to take the Chilkoot Trail
left Dyea and went to Skagway to use the “safe” trail. Dyea’s death had begun
and within a few years it was abandoned.
After we finished at the Park Service visitor’s
center we walked the town on our own, stopping at the city museum which had a
nice collection of gold rush era items and some more history of the town,
including its importance during World War II. The museum was originally a
women’s college and was the first granite building in the state. We had heard
that the town’s semi-famous Gold Rush Cemetery was nearby so we decided to walk
over. It was a nice walk that took us out of town and past the railroad’s
maintenance shops (which Dave loved), but it was not nearby. Two miles later
we reached the cemetery and its two famous graves.
Along with the thousands of stampeders, con
men and swindlers also made the trip Dyea and Skagway to separate the men from
their money. People were selling everything from gold seeking groundhogs to
tickets on hot air balloons to float over the mountains. The most famous of
the bandits was Jefferson “Soapy” Smith who virtually ruled Skagway – even the
local Marshall was in his gang. While Soapy’s men robbed and cheated the
citizens of Skagway, Soapy would go around making humanitarian gestures (often
giving a few dollars to the widow of someone his men killed the night before)
as if he was unrelated to the violence. He even started a charity to feed
and
care for the stray dogs in town. The townspeople were fed up with Soapy and
his gang and formed a group to figure out how to stop him. One evening after a
miner had been robbed of all his gold dust the group had a meeting on one of
the town docks. To keep Soapy and his men out, they stationed the town
surveyor, Frank Reid at the entrance to the dock. Soapy heard of this meeting
and went down to the dock to try to break it up. A gunfight ensued and Frank
had been shot, as one guide put it, “where no man wants to be shot”, and Soapy
had been shot through the heart. Soapy died instantly, Frank Reid suffered for
12 days. Both men are buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery. Soapy has a wooden
headstone and Frank has a granite obelisk inscribed, “He gave his life for the
honor of Skagway”.
After such a long walk we rewarded ourselves with some ice cream and found one of the two internet places and sent in some pages that we had written on the ferry the day before.