Tourism Glitters in Gold Rush Towns

DAWSON, Yukon Territory — When Canadian Mountie Dan Parlee dons his Dudley Dooright duds and hits the streets on his trusty steed Justin, he’s not out to catch dastardly villains. He’s out to catch the eye of tourists.

Even the mounted police are in on the modern-day gold rush in towns born out of the Klondike mining stampede that settled the region a century ago.

Only now, it’s a tourist rush.

Instead of arriving by foot, dog sled or rickety handmade boats in search of gold, today’s stampeders lumber in to the Yukon and Alaskan towns by cruise ship and recreational vehicle in search of open country and a bit of nostalgia.

Gold-rush towns are happy to oblige. The two main stops on the modern gold-rush itinerary--Skagway, Alaska, and Dawson, near the Klondike gold fields in the Canadian Yukon--offer visitors a mother lode of sights, sounds, history and attractions.

“Gold mining still goes on here, but tourism is No. 1 now,” said Parlee, who dresses up in an antique Mountie uniform and patrols on horseback now and then to please the tourists. Parlee stops and poses on the dirt streets of Dawson whenever visitors pull out cameras.

Actors dressed in 1890s garb and as dance-hall girls wander the streets to draw audiences for gold-rush musicals and revues. Tour buses carry visitors to cemeteries where the original Klondike stampeders are buried. For a few dollars, tourists can pan for gold and keep whatever flecks of precious metal they find.

“It is like Disneyland, but that’s all right,” said Bob Martin of Claremont, visiting Skagway aboard the cruise ship Dawn Princess. “They have the legitimate historic background here as opposed to Disneyland, which is purely synthetic from top to bottom.”

In addition, Skagway has great scenery with mountains and glaciers all around. It’s also one of only two southeastern Alaska cities that can be reached both by car and cruise ship.

Shops, with such names as Klothes Rush Gifts, Klondike Nugget and Maximilian’s Gold Rush Emporium, peddle miniature gold pans and monster “sourdough shot glasses.”

“People coming here are going to figure out that Taiwan is the biggest city in Alaska, because that’s where all that stuff seems to be made,” said Lloyd Whaley of Brookings, Ore., who visited Skagway on a bear hunting trip to the Yukon.

And there’s some resentment on both sides.

“The cruise directors should tell people they’re entering a real working environment. People do live here and cut trees and kill animals. It’s not all just Gold Rush and dancing and 1898,” said Dale Albecker, a desk clerk at Sgt. Preston’s Lodge, whose great-grandfather came north during the Gold Rush of 1897-98.

With just 800 year-round residents, Skagway is overrun by 600,000 tourists in summer. Mayor Sioux Plummer said visitors strain traffic, emergency services and other city functions, but most residents figure it’s a trade-off for the money they spend.

“There’s grumbling, but down deep in the grumblers’ hearts, there’s a healthy respect that tourism is their main income,” Plummer said.

In fact, the tourists provide jobs for folks from a lot farther south.

“I never heard of Skagway before. Just from the name, it sounded kind of dumpy, but then I got here, and it’s just this beautiful little town,” said Trissy Fugate, a music major from Pocatello, Idaho, who arrived to perform in “The Days of ’98 Show” over the summer.

Since a freight railroad to Skagway closed in the early 1980s, tourism and sporadic mining-ore shipments through the town’s port have been the main source of jobs. The railway itself has reopened, but only as a tourist attraction.

While Skagway is all dolled up for visitors with flamboyantly painted storefronts and horse-drawn carriage rides, Dawson, 500 miles north, is a grittier frontier town that looks more genuine, with swinging saloon doors and dirt streets that turn to deep mud in the spring rains. Surprisingly, though, Skagway has more authentic buildings from Gold Rush days, lovingly restored by the National Park Service.

“There were a lot of fires in Dawson during the Gold Rush,” said Paula Pawlovich, marketing manager for the Klondike Visitors Assn. “Most of the old buildings left here look authentic but were actually built in the early 1900s.”

The dirt streets add to Dawson’s pioneer ambience, and visitors often figure they’re deliberately left unpaved. Actually, locals say they’d like paved streets, but permanently frozen soil below ground would crack the pavement.

Dawson draws only about 60,000 visitors a year, but since they come overland, they tend to stay longer and spend more than the fly-by-night cruise ship passengers in Skagway.

The town has the added attraction of gambling at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s casino, along with cabins that were home to Yukon writers Jack London and Robert Service.

And there’s still gold in the hills. Mining companies are reworking old claims, and the occasional visitor tries his luck at the Klondike riches.

“I’ve got a couple of gold pans in the truck with the fishing rods. I’ll do some panning while I’m here,” said Jim Bergen of Hoquiam, Wash., during a visit to Dawson. “I doubt I’ll find gold, but I hope I get some fish.”