The White Pass and Yukon Route is a Canadian and U.S. Class II 3 ft narrow gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other railroad. Equipment, freight and passengers are ferried by ship through the Port of Skagway, and via road through a few of the stops along its route.The railroad began construction in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush as a means of reaching the goldfields. With its completion in 1900, it became the primary route to the interior of the Yukon, supplanting the Chilkoot Trail and other routes. The route continued operation until 1982, and in 1988 was partially revived as a heritage railway.Today, the railroad is a subsidiary of Clublink and operated by the Pacific and Arctic Railway and Navigation Company, the British Columbia Yukon Railway Company and the British Yukon Railway Company, originally known as the British Yukon Mining, Trading and Transportation Company, which use the trade name White Pass and Yukon Route.The line was born of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. The most popular route taken by prospectors to the gold fields in Dawson City was a treacherous route from the port in Skagway or Dyea, Alaska, across the mountains to the Canadian border at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass or the White Pass. There, the prospectors were not allowed across by Canadian authorities unless they had one ton of supplies. This usually required several trips across the passes. There was a need for better transportation than pack horses used over the White Pass or human portage over the Chilkoot Pass. This need generated numerous railroad schemes. In 1897, the Canadian government received 32 proposals for Yukon railroads, and most were never realized.In 1897, three separate companies were organized to build a rail link from Skagway to Fort Selkirk, Yukon, 325 miles away. Largely financed by British investors, a railroad was soon under construction. A 3 ft gauge was chosen by the railway contract builder Michael James Heney. The narrow roadbed required by narrow gauge greatly reduced costs when the roadbed was blasted in solid rock. Even so, 450 tons of explosives were used to reach White Pass summit. The narrow gauge also permitted tighter radii to be used on curves, making the task easier by allowing the railroad to follow the landscape more, rather than having to be blasted through it.Construction started in May 1898, but they encountered roadblocks in dealing with the local city government and the town's crime boss, Soapy Smith. The President, Samuel H. Graves , was elected as chairman of the vigilante organization that was trying to expel Soapy and his gang of confidence men and rogues. On the evening of July 8, 1898, Soapy Smith was killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf with guards at one of the vigilante's meetings. Samuel Graves witnessed the shooting. The railroad helped block off the escape routes of the gang, aiding in their capture, and the remaining roadblocks in Skagway subsided.On July 21, 1898, an excursion train hauled passengers for 4 miles out of Skagway, the first train to operate in Alaska. On July 30, 1898, the charter rights and concessions of the three companies were acquired by the White Pass & Yukon Railway Company Limited, a new company organized in London. Construction reached the 2,885-foot summit of White Pass, 20 miles away from Skagway, by mid-February 1899. The railway reached Bennett, British Columbia, on July 6, 1899. In the summer of 1899, construction started north from Carcross to Whitehorse, 110 miles north of Skagway. The construction crews working from Bennett along a difficult lakeshore reached Carcross the next year, and the last spike was driven on July 29, 1900, with service starting on August 1, 1900. By then much of the Gold Rush fever had died down.At the time, the gold spike was actually a regular iron spike. A gold spike was on hand, but the gold was too soft and instead of being driven, was just hammered out of shape.
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