#10: Before Skagway, Skagua

"Here we will cast our future lots and try to hew out our fortune."
sketch by Brenda Wilbee

Skagua is Skagway's bigger history, beginning when no one lived in it, not even the native Chilkoot of the Tlingit Nation. The natives preferred the more sheltered inlet two bays to the west—and their little village of Dyea at the foot of their ancestral trade trail. A man had to be daft, they figured, to settle in Skagua. Who but a crazy man could put up with such a ferocious wind whipping off the pass at forty and fifty miles an hour, with the bite of the arctic in its teeth?

Skookum Jim, Ben Moore, Capt Wm Moore
sketch by Brenda Wilbee

Such wind did not stop Captain William Moore. A seasoned steamboat builder and gold miner, Moore had made and lost at least three fortunes—Peru, California, Colorado, Washington, BC, Alaska. He knew too that the big gold was yet to be found somewhere in the Canadian Yukon way up north. When, in 1887, an Interior Tagish man by the name of Skookum Jim showed him a “secret” trail through the formidable mountains—uncontrolled by the Chilkoot—Captain Moore visualized a new kind of fortune. He’d plant a town, open the trail, charge a toll, sell city lots, build a wharf, charge docking fees. He was not too old to make another fortune; only this time he’d mine the miners who would surely be stampeding through.

His son Ben Moore wrote in his diary dated October 20, 1887:

[We] arrived at Skagway Bay at 10 a.m. and ran our canoe up in the creek about a quarter of a mile, then put up our tent and camped at the foot of a little bluff on the beach, where a small creek comes down and joins the large creek on the right-hand or east side of the bay.

He later wrote about that day:

I have never forgotten my father’s words to me. ‘Here,’ said he, ‘we will cast our future lots and try to hew out our fortune,’ as I struck my axe into our first tree. Later we reconnoitered up the valley a way and put up notice of location for one hundred sixty acres upland, and measured off six hundred feet for a wharf site and placed our notice on the same. We ran across numerous old deadfall traps for bear and other animals, a short distance up the valley. My father also said on this occasion: ‘I fully expect before many years to see a pack trail through this pass, followed by a wagon road, and I would not be at all surprised to see a railroad through to the lakes.’

Son Ben filed the 160-acre homestead under his name and for the next ten years father and son “proved” up, building a rudimentary cabin, wharf, sawmill, platting city lots, and widening the trail. They worked tirelessly, coming and going for ten years, adding a bunkhouse, a cookhouse, earning money as needed by piloting steamships or working in the sawmills and salmon canneries. Ten years they worked and waited, preparing for the invasion of stampeders who would storm the beach once the gold was found.

Ten years late none other than Skookum Jim found the gold.

It took a year for news to get out. But by July, 1897, the rush was on. The first 200 miners tumbled off the Queen onto Moore Wharf on July 29, 1897. Within days, hundreds more swarmed the beach. Within weeks, thousands.

Skagway's First Stampeders / July 29, 1898
sketch by Brenda Wilbee

Skagway evolved into a city like any other, with villains and heroes and entrepreneurs. The Moores made their fortune, as did a lot of other people. Today, more than a hundred years later, Skagway remains a viable town, growing out of its gold rush roots. And while only a handful of gold rush towns exist intact, Skagway is one.
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