Skayway, Alaska

 Skagway was originally spelled S-K-A-G-U-A, a Tlingit Indian word for
 “windy place.” The first people in the area were Tlingits from the Chilkoot
 and Chilkat villages in the Haines-Klukwan area. From a fish camp in nearby
 Dyea, they used the Chilloot Trail for trading with the First Nations people
 of the Yukon Territory. The windy Skagway valley was favored for hunting
 mountain goats and bear, but no one settled here until 1887. That June,
 Skookum Jim, a Tlingit from the Carcross-Tagish area, encountered members of
 the William Ogilvie expedition, a Canadian survey party that came north to
 map the country.

 Captain William Moore, a member of the party, was persuaded
 by Skookum Jim to follow him up a lower pass through the mountains, while
 the others took the Chilkoot route. Leaving this beach, the two journeyed
 up the Skagway valley to Lake Bennett, meeting the other party seven days 
 later. The two men were excited and extolled the advantage of this new route
 through the mountains. Ogilvie at once named it for Sir Thomas White,
 a Canadian government minister. Moore had visions of a port city served 
 by a railroad, and returned to this valley with his son Bernard in October
 1887. They built a cabin and a wharf, and waited. A small number of
 prospectors had been entering the north country searching for gold since 
 the 1870’s. It  was only a matter of time until a great stampede would 
 bring many more. In August 1896, Tlingits Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie, 
 along with George Carmack of California, discovered a large amount of gold
 in Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River, some 600 miles from here.
 


 The creek was renamed Bonanza, and when word of this strike reached the
 outside world in July 1897, the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898 was on!