We rode the White Pass & Yukon Train from Skagway into Canada and back. We did not get off the train so we didn’t have to show our passports. The White Pass & Yukon Route we rode is an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark like the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty and the Panama Canal.  Skagway and Dyea entered the gold rush in 1897 when news of the discovery of gold in the Canadian Klondike reached Seattle. Prospectors arrived and chose the shorter but steeper Chilkook Trail, which began in Dyea, or the White Pass Trail. The Chilkoot Pass required prospectors to carry a ton of supplies, thought to be a years worth, to the interior lake country where stampeders began a 550 mile journey to the Yukon River and the gold fields. The Chilkoot Trail is the location of the famous picture of the stampeders hiking up the mountain in the snow. We walked 2 miles of the trail and needed a pass to continue because of the degree of difficulty, straight up!  

George Brackett built a twelve mile toll road up the canyon of the White Pass, but stampeders did not have money to pay so this road did not last long.  In 1898, a London investor and Michael Heney, a railroad contractor, purchased Brackett’s road and began laying the 110 miles of track, with the rails being only three feet apart to aide with the steep grades (3.9%), cliff hanging turns of 16 degrees, tunnels,  bridges, temperatures of 60 below and trestles. During WWII, the railroad was the chief supplier for the US Army’s Alaska Highway construction project.

The tunnel! The Chilkoot Trail up close!