White Pass Historic Transportation System: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
Region 11 Park Cultural Landscapes Program. 2002. White Pass Historic Transportation System: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 100121. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPS Alaska Regional Office, Anchorage, Alaska / CRIS Database
The White Pass Historic Transportation System of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, is a component landscape of the international White Pass Historic Corridor, an approximately forty-mile long linear landscape that extends from the head of the Lynn Canal in Skagway, Alaska across the Coast Mountain range to Bennett, British Columbia, in Canada. The corridor was a heavily traveled passage to the Yukon gold fields by the Stampeders of 1897-98. The White Pass Historic Corridor begins at tidewater near the head of the Lynn Canal, and climbs from the temperate coastal rainforest through the interior boreal forest to subalpine and montane vegetation zones before reaching alpine tundra below the pass’s summit at 2,865 feet. Immediately beyond the pass in British Columbia, the corridor enters a stark, sparsely vegetated plateau newly emerged from a Pleistocene ice cover. The corridor exists in a landscape subject to a range of environmental dynamics. Most visible of these is the heavily sedimented Skagway River, whose course has meandered and eroded significant portions of the historic route over the past century. The three linear landscapes that characterize the park unit--the White Pass Trail, the Brackett Wagon Road (including the Brackett Sled Road), and the privately-owned White Pass &Yukon Route Railway (WP&YR)--all were important routes for the Stampeders traveling to the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98. The White Pass Trail and the Brackett Road are not used recreationally at this time, whereas the WP&YR has long been a major tourist avenue through the corridor. Contributing historical resources within the unit include the remains of a trail system and wagon road, archeological sites, artifacts and structural remnants related to temporary settlement and travel in the corridor, and an operating narrow gauge railway (WP&YR) that takes tourists from Skagway to the summit of the White Pass during the summer months.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Region 11 Park Cultural Landscapes Program
- Date of Issue
- 2002-07-15
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- AKR , KLGO
- Keywords
- Brackett Wagon Road, Dead Horse Trail, Engineering, Exploration-Settlement, historic vernacular landscape, Klondike gold rush, narrow gauge railway, Skagway Trail, Stampeders, the Mining Frontier, tourism, Trail of 1897, Transportation, White Pass & Yukon Route Railway, White Pass City, White Pass Historic Corridor, White Pass Trail, Yukon