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The Yukon Gold Rush of 1898 brought thousands of prospectors
north to the little town of Skagway,
geographically, the closest port to the riches of the Klondike
region.
The gold deposits were near Dawson City, north of the broad Yukon River.
But first, the prospectors had to reckon with the rugged Coastal Range that
separated Skagway from the Yukon River Valley. The journey over the
mountains was short, but so cold and dangerous that Canadian Mounties
required prospectors to have a years worth of supplies before they even
began the trek. A narrow gauge railway was built to help ease the way,
but the going was still tough. Cemeteries in and around Skagway provide
proof that a good number of gold seekers never completed the journey.
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| But it was hardly a picnic for those who did make it into the Yukon River Valley. Dawson City was little more than endless rows of drafty tents and sheds. It wasn’t until 1899 that permanent, commercial buildings appeared in the city. It was in that year that Dawson City became known as one of the busiest cities in North America. |
| But it was also the year the Gold Rush ended. In little over a year, the city had gone from boom to bust. And so, as the gold played out, so did the drama of the Klondike region. |
| Of course, the drama is back, now related by tour guides. Sassy stage shows, beer halls, restored (albeit non-functioning) bordellos, river-churning sternwheelers, reconstructed ghost towns, and reopened gold mines all pay tribute to those years. If you’re coming for the gold, you’re over 100 years late, but it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll return home from your Alaska & Yukon tour a richer person for the experience. |
Which cruise lines offer Alaska & Yukon cruise tours:
• Holland America |
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Don’t use the “B” word!
Your tour operator will refer to their vehicle as a “motorcoach” or a “coach”… but never, ever, as a “bus.”
(Tour guides are known to levy a quarter for each transgression. Pots of $75 are not unusual by the end of the tour. The kitty goes to the rider who comes closest to guessing its amount.)
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Where the land portion of your cruise tour begins:
(For cruise tours of 13 nights/14 days or shorter):
• Skagway (for northbound travel originating in Vancouver)
• Anchorage (for southbound travel terminating in Vancouver) |
Where the land portion of your cruise tour ends:
(For tours of 13 nights/14 days or shorter):
• Anchorage (for northbound cruises originating in Vancouver)
• Skagway (for southbound cruises terminating in Vancouver) |
Length of your cruise tour:
• Cruise: 4 days/3 nights
• Land: 9 days/8 nights |
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| Tour lengths may vary depending on tour extensions chosen. Holland America also offers 18-day and 21-day Alaska & Yukon tours that feature complete (rather than partial) Gulf of Alaska cruise itineraries. |
Highlights of your cruise tour:
• 3-Night Inside Passage cruise (all cruise tours)
• Denali National Park – home to majestic Mt. McKinley
• Rustic lodge overnight(s) within Denali National Park
• Scenic domed train ride through Alaskan wilderness
• Anchorage or Fairbanks overnight
• Gold panning, gold mine tour and sternwheeler cruise on the Chena River
• Portage Glacier cruise
• White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad
• Whitehorse “Frantic Follies Review”
• Yukon dinner show
• Alaska Highway through the wilderness |
Optional Activities on your cruise tour:
• Dinner aboard scenic dome train
• Sport fishing
• River rafting from mild to wild!
• Horseback riding
• Glacier hiking
• Mountain biking
• Heli-hiking
• Flightseeing over glaciers
• Kayaking
• Dogsled kennel tour
• Wagon ride
• Bungee jumping
• Hang gliding |
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Cruise Tour destinations and attractions:
While each tour succeeds in offering a well-rounded list of sights and attractions, no tour can do it all. Every Alaska & Yukon tour includes at least some of the destinations listed alphabetically below. |
| Anchorage: Alaska’s biggest city is big on attractions. Stand inside a bubble or touch exotic reptiles at the Imaginarium (great fun for kids), visit the Earthquake Museum (the city “hosted” a massive earthquake in 1964), or spend time at any of the big-city attractions found nowhere else in Alaska, including the zoo and the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Because of the city’s hotel and restaurant offerings, Anchorage is a popular stop on route to or from Denali tours. |
| Beaver Creek: On the Alaskan Highway, just a few miles from the Yukon/Alaska border, Beaver Creek is the westernmost settlement in Canada. Home to about 100 residents, it’s also one of Canada’s least populous. About half of the residents are members of the White River First Nation, a once-nomadic people closely linked to the Athapascan language group. Beaver Creek is about as remote a place as you’ll ever find, but it’s a welcomed stopover point for those choosing an abbreviated “shortcut” tour between Whitehorse and Fairbanks. Overnight lodging includes a spirited Yukon dinner show. |
| Carcross: The name “Carcross” has nothing to do with automobiles and everything to do with caribou. It was here that a natural crossing between two lakes provided a passage for migrating herds of caribou. “Caribou Crossing” was shortened to Carcross and the name stuck. Today, it’s a popular stopping point for cruise tours traveling between Skagway and Whitehorse. |
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Dawson City: This town, far north of the Trans Canada Highway, was once the biggest Canadian town west of Winnipeg. At its peak, Dawson City bustled with 40,000 anxious prospectors and their suppliers (and scammers, as tour members soon learn). Today, it’s one of the best remaining examples of a typical gold rush town. Vintage, false-front, wooden buildings and boardwalks have been restored to their turn-of-the-century look. Highlights include a visit to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s gambling hall; the saloon looks just like it did back in 1898. It sounds like it too, with regular, live, can-can performances onstage accompanied by plenty of hootin’ and hollerin’ from the audience. Along the boardwalk you’ll encounter shops, restaurants, and historic points of interest (including a library paid for, in part, by Andrew Carnegie). |
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| Denali National Park: It’s often shrouded in clouds, but with any luck, you’ll see the towering Mt. McKinley as you enter the national park. You’ll spend at least one night here, “roughing it” at a deluxe, but rustic-looking lodge not far from the park’s entrance. Shuttle buses will operate between your lodge and the park for optional tours and nature walks. Plus, you’ll have plenty of time (if not the nerve) to try some white water rafting or kayaking, do some bungee jumping, or maybe take a helicopter ride to a remote corner of the park for a hike over a glacier or two. If your idea of adventure is a little less aerobic, then consider that warm, roaring fire and a big, soft, wingback chair in the lodge’s lobby. |
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Eagle Eyes:
An eagle’s eyesight is at least four times sharper than yours. And, like all birds, Eagles possess excellent color vision.
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Eagle: Named for the eagles in nearby Eagle Bluff, this small town near the Canadian border was originally home to the Han Kutchin Indian Tribe. The community was founded in 1897 and incorporated four years later – one of the first incorporated cities in the Alaskan Interior. Officially, Eagle has about 150 permanent residents, guaranteeing that your arrival in town won’t go unnoticed! |
Eagle hugs the banks of the Yukon River, and it is on the banks of this river that you can board the famous “Yukon Queen II.” During your boat ride along the “River of Gold,” you’ll see the old Athabascan Indian villages and abandoned gold dredges that line the waterway. |
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| Fairbanks: Here’s a city that’s so far north, there are almost 22 hours of daylight in the summer, but payback time comes around each winter when the sun comes up around 11 AM and sets before 3 PM. In-town attractions include the Fairbanks Ice Museum (you’re surprised?) and the Fairbanks Community Museum, which reminds visitors of the town’s Gold Rush days. But most tours focus on out-of-town attractions. If hopping aboard a sternwheeler for a narrated tour down the Chena River and trying your hand at gold panning appeals to you, then choose a tour with two nights in Fairbanks. |
| Fraser: Although the Whitepass & Yukon Route Railway tracks continue all the way north to Whitehorse, Fraser is where most cruise tour passengers transfer from the train to the motorcoaches. The drive between Fraser and Whitehorse takes about two hours. |
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| Portage Glacier: Some cruise tours include a short boat excursion to Portage Glacier. A visitor’s center is located a few miles off the Seward Highway (the road that connects Seward to Anchorage), but if you want to see the glacier up close, you’ll have to take the boat out into the iceberg-filled sea. Don’t worry – the boat’s hull has been designed for bumping icebergs. |
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Moose Minutiae:
Moose are the largest member of the deer family – males often weigh between 1000 to 1400 pounds. Cartoon characters aside, moose tend to be unpredictable and quick-tempered.
(And they rarely befriend flying squirrels.)
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Skagway: For most cruise tour passengers, Skagway is either the beginning or the end of the cruise portion of their itinerary. Just as gold prospectors used Skagway as their access to and from the Klondike region of the Yukon, so do the cruise lines.
There were a number of legitimate merchants who helped outfit the thousands of prospectors who passed through Skagway in the late 1890’s. Still, there were at least as many “entrepreneurs” who did their best to separate the naïve from their money. What was left over after the conmen did their fleecing, generally ended up in the town’s saloons and bordellos. Tour escorts love to recount – or reenact – the colorful tales and personalities of that era, making Skagway a favorite stop for cruise passengers. |
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Tok: Mush! And welcome to Tok, “the dog mushing capital of Alaska.” A visit to this village will almost certainly include a dog team demonstration. Though you won’t be seeing the process during the real “mushing” season, you’ll get a good idea about the breeding, training, and operation of dogsled teams.
One look at Tok and you know you’re in an outpost town. A workers camp was set up here during the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942. From March through November of that year, over 50,000 men and women worked on the 1,422-mile road (all of them didn’t sleep in Tok, of course!). An airstrip was constructed during W.W.II to service aircraft that were then ferried to Russia. Television didn’t arrive until 1973. |
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| Whitehorse: Without the Whitepass & Yukon Route Railway, there would be no Whitehorse. The railroad’s most treacherous route – over the Coastal Range – was completed in 1898 and the final run to Whitehorse, along the Yukon River, was finished two years later. As the northern terminus for the railroad, Whitehorse’s status as a transportation and supply hub was secured. From Whitehorse, gold prospectors traveled down the river (the Yukon River winds eastward, eventually emptying into the Bering Sea), and into either the history books or obscurity. Completion of the Alaska Highway further confirmed the city’s role as a regional transportation hub. |
 Whitepass & Yukon Route Railway: The railroad was completed in 1898 to haul prospectors over the Coastal Range to the gold-rich interior. But by the time it was finished the rush was almost over. From Skagway, the train climbs 2,285 feet in only 20 miles. Before the railway was constructed, gold rushers followed the treacherous Chilkoot Trail (now defined by the Klondike Highway), which was completed in 1978. The 33-mile trail is still there, still littered with refuse shed by the gold rushers as they lightened their loads during their race to the Klondike gold fields. This “refuse” is protected by Federal, State, and Provincial laws. In fact, it’s forbidden to remove items from the trail, which is often termed the “world’s longest museum.” The train route includes tunnels, hair-raising bridge crossings, and amazing views of waterfalls, mountains, and glaciers. |
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Geography 101:
What’s the third longest river in North America?
1. Mississippi
2. Missouri
3. Yukon!
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Yukon River: From its origins high in the Canadian Rockies, to its delta almost 2,000 miles distant at the Bering Sea, the Yukon River ranks as the third longest in North America. But it’s the 300-mile stretch from Whitehorse to Dawson City that placed the Yukon River in the history books. During the late 1890’s, the river served as the route to the gold, a vital link for prospectors itching to get their hands on the riches of the Klondike region of the Yukon Territory. Picture the scene in the summer of 1898 as a flood of makeshift rafts, boats, and sternwheelers crammed the river with hopeful gold seekers.
Today, some tours include a ride aboard a sternwheeler down the Yukon, as well as visits to Native American villages and a chance to try your luck at gold panning. |
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It’s big. It’s beautiful. And it’s in your backyard.
Alaska & Canada!
Find the best tour price by calling one of our Cruise Specialists at: (800) 242-1781 |
HOLLAND AMERICA 11-night “Denali & Alaska Highway” – an Alaska & Yukon cruise tour featuring the line’s beautiful Ryndam – can be yours for only $1,499 (Inside Cabin). Suites start at just $1,949! Ask for Holland America’s Tour 6!
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HOLLAND AMERICA 12-night “Denali & Dawson CruiseTour” – an Alaska & Yukon tour featuring the Zaandam – is offered at only $1,599 (Inside Cabin) or just $2,049 for a Suite! Ask for Holland America’s Tour 1A!
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HOLLAND AMERICA 20-night “Great Land Odyssey” – a combination Denali National Park and Alaska & Yukon tour aboard the Statendam – starts at $4,162 (Inside Cabin). Verandah Suites start at only $5,062! Ask for Holland America’s Tour 10!
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