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The Upper Section of the White Pass out of Skagway
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-- A Digital Art Series --
As one continues up the Klondike Highway to the Canadian section of the White
Pass, high above the sea level town and fjord sea port of Skagway, far below, We
pass the jagged peaks of the Sawtooth Range, encounter falls from glaciers where
the water is safe to drink, witness a bridge along a fault line where the small
earthquakes rumble constantly, and just basically get a breath taking view of
the incredible sights presented to the visitor from every angle and perspective.
The original travelers were probably not so intent on the views as they trundled
along the original White Pass trail on the
slopes opposite the two lane road completed not all that long ago. Before the
railroad and the wagon road it was a
precarious trail along precipitous slopes.
Horses were brought in by unscrupulous hustlers from the south bought for a
pittance at the end of their working years and run, as the saying goes, into the
ground until they collapsed on the White Pass trail, also called "The Trail of
Dead
Horses", as described by Jack London in his accounts, as he was also one of
those in the area during the gold rush days.
The animals that collapsed on the trail were stripped of their loads and shoved
over the side to die a prolonged death on or closer to the valley floor at the
bottom. There they often died in the more merciful jaws of predators.
Some of the men, who for various reasons, collapsed on the trail met the same
fate at the hands of crazed gold stampeders, obsessed with gold fever, who, if
delayed long enough, simply shoved them out of the way and off the edge so that they could
continue their trek to the gold fields.
A lot of the men came to Skagway with wives and children and when they found how
tough the trail was, abandoned them to fend for themselves in the town. In all
fairness, not all the men were crazed enough by the gold to forget the
dependents, but often met their death either on the trail or in the gold fields.
During the winter the "Tormented Valley", so named by the bonsai-like twisted
dwarfed pines that struggle in the nutrient-deprived upland table lands, is
covered by an enormous depth of snow whipped around by violent winds. At first
the men simply ran out of food and many starved to death, whereas others also
met with bizarre fates, if not the elements then death by the practice by some
of cannibalism.
A bad situation was made worse by the primitive media of the day, which took any
story they could and eagerly telegraphed it back to the home newspapers,
oblivious of the lies contained, or not even caring, or, simply with the
knowledge of the
impossibility of ever being able to verify anything. So that amplified the gold
rush until it reached outrageous
proportions. The greatest victims of the gold rush were, as is often
the case even to this day, those that believed everything they read in the
papers.
Finally, Skagway attracted the genius thieves, drawn in by the scent of money,
the principle of which was Soapy Smith, so
named because one of his scams was to randomly put coins in bars of soap he was selling,
a primitive version of the modern day
lottery, in a manner of speaking, only to stop the practice as soon as word got
out and everyone was buying his soap. He
later managed to get himself elected sheriff of Skagway, and soon word got out
about his other practice of robbing the miners outright. That caused the gold rush
to be diverted to the next fjord sea port of Dyea, where the miners risked the
more difficult Chilcoot trail rather than risk being robbed by Smith, his gang
and by others in Skagway.
Today Skagway is suffering a second gold rush, but this time it's a gold rush of
jewelry shops, which the town council and
others, here better left unnamed, have allowed to set up in such inordinate
numbers instead of fixing a cap on how many would be feasible that there are
arguably more now than the tourist trade can accommodate, causing a crisis of
diminishing returns. Also, among other things, this allows the renters of
the already limited housing available to the semi-annual work force to inflate
rentals to the highest rates the market will bear.
So Alaska still has her secrets, which is why I've given it the nick name: "I'll-ask-ya". And what of the gold fields in Canada that so long ago brought forth the gold of the stampede? Well, these days, more gold is obtained from those fields and other places around there than during the gold rush days.
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The White
Pass to the Yukon gold fields from Skagway... more gold comes out now than in
the gold rush days.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
Made famous by Charlie Chaplin in his famous shoe-eating scene, perhaps atop a mountain
by The Tormented Valley.
