The original station and former headquarters of the company in Skagway.
In August 1896, gold was found by prospectors near Dawson in the Klondike area in Yukon Territory, Canada. Because of the remoteness of the Klondike, the news spread slowly but as soon as it reached the large cities of the US West Coast, in July 1897, a lot of American people seeking fortune or adventure turned gold prospector overnight and frantically rushed North to the seemingly endless Klondike gold fields. The Klondike Gold Rush had begun!
About 100,000 people started to head North (less than 50,000 actually reached the Klondike). The first difficulty the stampeders had to deal with, was to get to the Klondike, since communication routes in the area were almost non-existent. They could either reach the Klondike from the East through Canada, or go around Alaska by ship and then up the Yukon River to the booming city of Dawson. Both ways were long and slow. A more direct route, but as difficult, was to follow the Inside Passage from Vancouver, a waterway amid the islands and using the straits off the coast of Canada and Alaska, up to Skagway or Dyea. Then to hike one of the two Indian trails through the Coastal Range and enter Canada at White Pass or Chilkoot Pass to reach Lake Bennett in British Columbia. From there, it was possible to get to the Klondike by sailing down the Yukon River, but only when the river was free of ice during the summer months.
The mainline makes its way in a steep valley and is a 3.8% grade at this point. Just before Glacier (MP 15).
At the climax of the Gold Rush in 1898, the difficult trails leading to Canada from the coast of Alaska were completely insufficient to move the mass of equipment and supplies the stampeders wanted to carry to the Klondike, and the difficulty of the journey was compounded by the harsh winter climate. To improve communications in the area, a group of people representing British financial interests and a Canadian citizen, former member of the Canadian Pacific construction team, studied the possibility of building an international railroad crossing the border at White Pass, linking the port of Skagway to Lake Benett in British Columbia and continuing beyond to the Yukon.
The White Pass & Yukon Railroad Company was founded in 1898 (actually three companies were incorporated, one to operate in Alaska, a second in British Columbia and a third in Yukon Territory). The company started to accumulate construction material and railroad equipment in Skagway where the first rails were laid in May 1898. In the meantime, the projected route was surveyed and it became clear that , because of mountainous terrain, a standard gauge railroad (4ft 8.5in between the rails) would be impossible to construct at a reasonable cost. Thus, it was decided to build a narrow gauge railroad (3ft gauge), allowing to follow the terrain more closely with tighter curves and requiring less earth-moving work to establish the narrower right-of-way.
Wooden trestle 15C surrounded by sheer clifs, seen from the opposite side of the valley.
Grading of the right-of-way started rapidly and the first miles of track were laid in the valley North of Skagway, despite some difficulties to bring construction supply to Alaska and the shortage of manpower, often more interested in searching for Klondike gold than in working to build the railroad. Less than 10 miles from Skagway, construction became more difficult, requiring the use of explosives to carve the right-of-way into the valley walls and several wooden trestles had to be built to cross streams running from glaciers. From this point, the grade is an almost constant 3.7-3.9% with numerous sharp curves all the way up to the summit of White Pass (elevation 2,885ft), 20 railroad-miles from Skagway.
The section just bellow the summit is especially steep, its construction required boring a 250ft-long tunnel in granite rock and carving the cliffs with explosives to cut the grade through. Most of this difficult work was done by hand, using very little mechanical equipment. The construction of an impressive 215ft-high and 840ft-long steel cantilever bridge was also necessary to get over a deep canyon, it was completed only in 1901. Meanwhile, a temporary switchback was used to route the track around the canyon and a covered turntable (because of the heavy snow falls) had to be built to turn the locomotives.
Steel cantilever bridge 18A near White Pass summit, completed in 1901 and used until 1969.
White Pass summit was reached on February 20, 1899 despite the harsh Alaska winter. After some legal issues were sorted out to determine the exact location of the border with Canada, the grading could resume toward Lake Bennett. The section beyond the summit of White Pass could only be built after snow melted in spring 1899, so in the meantime construction efforts were concentrated on the easier section of the line between Fraser and Lake Bennett, reached in June 1899. On July 6, 1899, the first train ran from Skagway to Lake Bennett, greatly improving access to the Klondike area. It was then possible to take a train from Skagway to Lake Bennett and continue by boat on the Yukon River to Dawson.
Once the line was opened to Lake Bennett, it became possible to carry by boat construction equipment to Carcross, Yukon Territory, and to continue grading the line from that point to Whitehorse, the northern end of the line, reached without major difficulties on June 8, 1900. The last part of the line to be build was the difficult 27 miles section along the Lake Bennett, where from Bennett to Carcross, the right-of-way had to be carved in rocks again. Eventually, the last spike (a Golden Spike) was driven in at Carcross on July 29, 1900.
Bennett station, on the shore of the namesake lake, where a steam-powered train is idle.
So two years and three months were necessary to complete the 110 miles (90 miles in Canada) of the international railroad, owing to the very difficult and sometimes extreme conditions of its construction. The White Pass & Yukon would be later recognized as an historical and significant International Civil Engineering Achievement. By summer 1900, the heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush was gone and there was not many prospectors left to transport. But still the White Pass & Yukon had significant North-South traffic to deal with: heavy equipment for the then booming mining industry and ore from the Klondike mines bound to the port of Skagway. In addition, the railroad company created the British Yukon Navigation Company in 1901, to operate steam river boats on the Yukon River beyond Whitehorse. The WP&YR with its motto "Gateway to the Yukon" was then an integrated transportation system.
