Chapter 32
One Horse Town

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Having been led straight off the ship and onto the train, we really hadn’t seen any of Skagway yet. Not that there’s all that much to see, of course. Here is a photo down the main street—aptly called Broadway.

The epitome of a one-horse town, I think it was hardest to believe that people actually live here.

Now, if the architecture here looks too well preserved to be true, a lot of it actually is. In an almost Disney-esque twist, many newer building have been built and then had their facades redone to look like they belong in a turn-of-the-century Alaskan small town. The effect certainly adds to the feeling of being someplace totally foreign.

Here’s the White Pass and Yukon Route headquarters and gift shop.

On the left in this picture, you’ll see Alaska’s most frequently photographed building: the Arctic Brotherhood Hall from 1899.

A prime example of rustic driftwood architecture, the facade was fashioned using 8,800 pieces of driftwood about a year after the building was erected for the Fraternal Order of the Arctic Brotherhood.

In the foreground of the last picture and standing in stark contrast to the unique architecture of a bygone period, you can see one of the many, many diamond and jewelry shops that Skagway is home to. Some of these stores at least sell locally-made jewelry, but others are simply eyesores that sell very generic items you could find anywhere.

The little hamlet that is Skagway seriously ends as quickly as it begins. Once you reach the end of these tourist blocks, you realize you don’t really have any choice except to turn around.

We poked into a couple different stores around and then also went into one of the town’s museums that’s set up to look like it did when it was an old saloon.

We’d heard a little bit about infamous Skagway gangster Soapy Smith from the narrator on the train as we passed the cemetery where he’s buried. Apparently, he was quite the con-artist in Denver before heading up to Skagway. Once he reached the small Alaskan town along with lots of gold miners, one of his swindles was to set up a telegraph office that didn’t actually have the equipment necessary to send messages. Instead, he’d just charge the locals and tap the messages into a telegraph with a cord that hit a dead-end at the wall. In fact, telegraphy wouldn’t come to Skagway for another three years after Smith set up his shop.

Smith grew quite notorious in the area, and he established a gang with more than 300 members. In the end, he tried to cheat a gold miner who returned to town on his way home from the Klondike by tricking him into a game of three-card monte. After the man lost and refused to hand over his money, Smith and his men took the gold by force. Several members of the local vigilante society (which was created to rein in Smith’s gang) went chasing after them. In a final shootout, Skagway hero Frank Reid and Soapy Smith both fatally wounded each other, and Smith’s hold on the town came to a bloody end.

Since many of the town’s nefarious characters hung out in saloons like this one, there was a sign on the wall that told the story of Smith and other gangsters from Skagway’s history.

Back outside, we continued wandering both sides of the single street because we didn’t have a whole lot else that we needed to do immediately.

Of all the Alaskan towns we visited, we decided that Skagway was the least “livable,” because it’s just so incredibly small. It was also beautiful, though, nestled in between lots of mountains.

We did a little shopping as we wandered around the stores. Mostly, though, we just joined the rest of the tourists in gawking at different buildings. That was the other thing we found ourselves saying: other than the shopkeepers, we didn’t see a single person around who actually lived here. It was all people from our ship and the other ships. We wondered what it would be like to experience Skagway on a day when there weren’t any ships in port. I couldn’t decide if it would just feel like a ghost town or if locals would suddenly come out of the woodwork.

We had to pick up this box of DELICIOUS fudge. I can’t remember what flavor it was, but we were very pleased with our purchase.

I took this picture because it’s just so obvious where downtown ends and the residential area begins.

So our only real choice was to turn around and start walking back in the other direction.

At this former brothel, there were some “working girls” sitting in the widow and catcalling at passersby to try to lure us in to see their show.

Of course, when we saw a Christmas store, we had to go in.

This was quite the garden.

Here are some closer pictures of the bizarre Arctic Brotherhood Hall.

Another former “house of ill repute,” the Red Onion Saloon is currently a restaurant on the bottom floor and a brothel museum on the second floor.

Yes, the “world’s oldest profession” once thrived in Alaska—not just in Skagway, but in most of the ports we visited. It makes sense when you think about the fact that thousands of (male) miners passed through and didn’t have a whole lot to do in these rural towns. We stepped inside the Red Onion, but we didn’t really feel like paying to eat or tour.

Instead, since we were weighed down with souvenirs that we didn’t really feel like carrying around, we just decided to quickly go back to the ship to drop off our purchases and eat a quick (prepaid) lunch.