Gold Rush Gateway; Skagway and Dyea, Alaska

Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, April 1986. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Good. 136 pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Oversized book, measuring 11 inches by 8 and 1-5 inches. Ex-library with some of the usual library markings. Stan Cohen was born and raised in Charleston, West Virginia and is a geology graduate of West Virginia University. After working in the oil fields in his native state he moved to Missoula, Montana in 1961 to work for the US Forest Service. In the summers of 1962 and 1963 he worked for the service in southeast Alaska and the Kenai Peninsula. He's written at least 15 books on the Last Frontier, and published another 35. Profusely illustrated with black and white photographs with much importance to the history of the Klondike Gold Rush. Two sites of much importance to the history of the Klondike Gold rush are situated at the head of the Lynn Canal. At the mouth of the Taiga River is the abandoned site of Dyea, once the major gateway to the Chill-out trail and the water route to the interior of the Yukon. Four miles to the southeast of Dyea, at the mouth of the Skagway River, lies the other major gateway to the goldfields by way of the White Pass Trail--Skagway. The early history of these two towns is inter-related, but today they are vastly different. Dyea has crumbled to the dust from which it sprang in 1897; Skagway has fared better, in large measure because of the railroad. With the closing of the railroad in 1982, many though Skagway would fade like Dyea. While this has not happened, the railroad formed a significant part of the town's history, and it has now disappeared.