You have two main options when travelling from Haines to Skagway: The road; about 400 miles via Haines Junction and Whitehorse, full days journey. The ferry; about 14 miles by sea taking 1 hour, or 35 minutes by the high speed ferry. We chose the latter, although we couldn't use the high speed ferry as the bus was too large to fit. The ferry sails the 14 miles up the Talya Inlet, don't let this innocent sounding name fool you, the depth of the water 50 feet from shore is up to 230 fathoms or 1380 feet. The shores rise steeply from the waters edge up to snow capped mountains topped with glaciers from the Alaskan ice field. As we approach Skagway, large cruise ships can be seen in the bay and as we turn the corner we see that today there are 4 in port. As with Ketchikan the population of the town increases when the tourist ships are in. Here, however, the increase is greater and the population of Skagway is only 800 and today is is probably multiplied 10 fold.

 

Entrance to Talya Inlet	Steep mountain sides in Talya Inlet
Skagway from the ferry as we are about to dock	Looking down Broadway Street towards the liner berths.

Skagway (Skaguay is the correct spelling) grew as a frontier town, the gold hungry arrived here by ship from the United States in 1898 and headed north to the Klondike goldfields. The town still retains the feel of 100 years ago. The buildings are all square built wooden structures, some still survive from the early days. The pavements or sidewalks as they say in the US are wooden also, the streets while tarmac surfaced now are unmarked with traffic markings.

The town was laid out in a typical grid pattern with streets running north/south and avenues east/west. Running up the west side of the town is the runway for the airport and the track of the White Pass & Yukon Railroad runs up the east. Either side of these are steep wooded hillsides.