Saturday, October 2, 2010

Skagway, Alaska

Skagway is a tourist town. The Klondike Highway to Skagway was filled with tourist buses. As many as six huge cruise ships can be in port at the same time. Stores selling merchandise to tourists line both sides of Broadway, Skagway’s main street. Lots of jewelry stores with double doors open to the cold outside and salespeople behind display cases inside. I was told in a bar frequented by local Alaskans that the cruise ship lines own the jewelry stores and have a reputation for not hiring locally. While I was there, not many of the tourists had gotten to the east end of 7th Street where the early history of the area was wonderfully preserved and presented at the Skagway Museum and City Hall. Haines, only a 15 mile ferry ride from Skagway, was a very different experience. With only one cruise ship a week docked there for 24 hours, it didn’t feel at all like a tourist town, although of course to some degree, like almost every town in Alaska, it is.

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