The man who saw it coming was Captain William Moore. A riverboat pilot and pack-trail veteran, Moore staked a 160-acre homestead at the mouth of the Skagway River in 1887 — a full decade early — convinced that gold in the Canadian interior would one day send a flood of people past his door looking for a way over the mountains. He built a sawmill, a wharf, and a rough trail toward the White Pass summit. When the stampede finally arrived in 1897, it simply overran him: newcomers re-platted his claim into a gridded boomtown almost overnight, and the quiet homestead became the busiest place in Alaska.
What rose on Moore's claim was extraordinary. Within a year Skagway went from a scatter of tents to a town of close to 10,000 — for a moment the largest settlement in Alaska — with a main street of false-front stores, outfitters, hotels, and saloons running wall to wall up Broadway. It was the supply depot for the whole stampede: nearly everything bound for the Klondike came ashore here first. A few miles west, a rival townsite called Dyea boomed at the foot of the steeper Chilkoot Trail, and for a season the two raced each other. When the railroad chose Skagway, Dyea emptied out and faded into the ghost town it remains today.
Why People Visit Skagway
Visitors come to Skagway for the most intact Gold-Rush town in Alaska — a real boomtown you can walk through — and for the railway that climbs straight out of it into the mountains. It is compact, dramatic, and easy to explore on foot, with the harbor, the historic district, and the trailheads all close together. Equal parts living history and big northern scenery, Skagway rewards anyone who wants to stand at the starting line of the Klondike stampede.
