Chilkoot Trail Waysides

The Chilkoot Trail is a 33 mile long recreational trail that begins in Dyea, Alaska and ends in Lake Bennett, Canada. This trail was one of the routes stampeeders would take to the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. Experience the Chilkoot Trail through these accessible audio described wayside exhibits.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 51 seconds

An old wagon road passes through this campground. Horses, mules, and people churned up the muddy ground all summer. In winter, they pulled sleds on the snowy creek bed. During the gold rush, Tlingit packers lost control of the trail to freighting companies.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 7 seconds

Moccasins and caribou have passed this way. So have cedar boxes, dried seaweed and eulachon oil. Long before the Klondike Gold Rush, Tlingit crossed this pass twice a year to trade with their Tagish partners. The feasted, shared stories, and often married. Kinship ties across the divide remain strong today.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 53 seconds

Millions of dollars in food and gear were piled on this pass in 1897-98. It was a gold mine for customs officials. Canada’s Northwest Mounted Police began collecting duty here and at White Pass in February 18. They checked that stampeders from all over the world carried enough goods to survive a year.

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 58 seconds

Chilkoot Pass could be cold, stormy and miserable year-round. Most stampeders moved on quickly, but a few stayed and struck it rich. One man made $100/day ferrying loads across Crater Lake in his small boat. His wife sold pies for $1.

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 42 seconds

Stampeders called this area Happy Camp. Reporter Tappan Adney called it ‘a misnomer, if ever there was one.’ Happy Camp lacked a good wood supply, and few people lingered. Before the Klondike Gold Rush, travelers usually hiked from Sheep Camp to Lindeman — forest to forest — in a day.

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 12 seconds

Transport companies moved goods between lake ferries here, and pushed their pack trains to Lindeman City. This was a busy transfer point.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 10 seconds

"At last, on reaching the top of a long hill, there lay stretched at our feet, though some distance below, a large placid sheet of water, looking like a huge piece of rose-colored silk spread between the mountains. At the point nearest us on a promontory of flat shore was a huge conglomeration of white tents, looking like a flock of seagulls on a distant beach. This was Linderman.” - Julius Price, Spring 1898.

 

Duration:

4 minutes

Stampeders kept arriving in Lindeman after the lakes froze in October 1897. By spring there were 4,000 people bottlenecked, building hundreds of boats and waiting for the breakup of the lake ice.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 7 seconds

Whenever stampeders could travel by boat, they did. Small and makeshift boats plied the lakes in the summer.

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 53 seconds

Stampeders who built boats at Lindeman had one extra obstacle: the rapids below.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 11 seconds

In spring 1898, a sea of tents stretched from here to Lake Lindeman. Travelers from the Chilkoot Trail and White Pass routes met at Bennett.

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 51 seconds

Over 20,000 stampeders hiked the Chilkoot and White Pass routes in 1897-98. Most spent 3 to 12 weeks getting their supplies across. The railway opened to Bennett a year later, and the town boomed until the rails reached Whitehorse.

 

Duration:

2 minutes, 4 seconds

This portion of the Chilkoot Trail is affected by avalanches until mid-July. Reduce your exposure in Avalanche Terrain.