- 5 hours ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:03A railway that carves its way through the wilds of Alaska to the goldfields of Canada's remote Yukon Territory.
00:12It's the western on steroids, man against nature, man against mountains, man against winter, man against himself.
00:20We discover how over 100 years ago one pioneer fought against impossible odds
00:26in order to transport prospectors taking part in the last great American adventure, the Klondike Gold Rush.
00:35It was known as one of the roughest towns in America. Apparently you could hear gunshots ringing out at all
00:40times of the night.
00:42You can look at this very kind of seedy hotel as being the foundation of the Trump family money.
00:51From gangsters and gold miners to Donald Trump's grandfather, this is how a remote railway changed the lives of those
01:00who came in search of the American dream.
01:06This is the White Pass and Yukon route, and here is its hidden story.
01:16In this series, we explore some of the greatest railways in the world, and the secrets surrounding them.
01:25From the ancient hills of Europe to the wastes of the Yukon Valley in North America,
01:30their dark and forgotten pasts have left their mark on history.
01:51Yukon, Canada, the least populated and westernmost federal state in the country.
02:00It's home to a landscape that is as beautiful and breathtaking as it is harsh and unforgiving.
02:07For hundreds of years, this rugged and mountainous region has been a destination for hunters, traders, pioneers and prospectors.
02:17But in more recent times, people have been flocking here for a very different reason.
02:36Opened in 1900, the White Pass and Yukon route originally ran from the Alaskan town of Skagway to the capital
02:45city of the Yukon Territory, Whitehorse.
02:48But in an area that to this day remains remote and scarcely inhabited, why was this railway built in the
02:55first place?
02:57This is pretty terrifying territory to try and build anything.
03:02These are deep valleys and tall mountains and deep forests up here.
03:06And suddenly, if you're walking along today, you happen upon a railway line.
03:12Well, it's a civil engineering feat.
03:15It was an amazing accomplishment during the height of the gold rush.
03:24Before the latter half of the 19th century, this part of North America remained a wild and untouched frontier,
03:31home only to the indigenous First Nations people of Canada and the abundant wildlife that roamed freely here.
03:40This is part of the traditional territory of the Carcross Tagish First Nations.
03:45We've been using this place for time immemorial and we are inland Tlingit and Tagish people.
03:51We use it as a traditional hunting and fishing location and have been for many generations, including my great-grandparents
04:00and those before them as well.
04:03Apart from a small number of European hunters and fur traders, few outsiders had ever thought of making the arduous
04:10journey to the Yukon.
04:14But the discovery of a lifetime was about to change the region's future forever more.
04:21It's always been just like a gold rush card game or roulette wheel, by quirk of fate.
04:28The right people at the right place at the right time and right events that would happen.
04:40Brittany Maslowski, known in Skagway as Dakota Panning, is a guide working for Alaska 360,
04:47which operates what's known as a dredge town, offering tourists the chance to experience what became known as the Klondike
04:55Gold Rush.
04:57The first gold strike is credited to George Washington Carmack.
05:02He's an American and he was sort of a lifetime prospector. He was just hanging out up in the Yukon.
05:08George Carmack, along with his brother-in-law Skookum Jim, a member of the Tagish First Nations people,
05:15had been tipped off by a fellow prospector about an area he believed was rich in the valuable metal.
05:24We went up to a creek called Rabbit Creek and they were panning, seeing what the situation was,
05:29and we ended up pulling five dollars out of a pan at Rabbit Creek.
05:34And back then that was a huge find that kind of meant, you know, we should stay here and check
05:39it out.
05:42By 1897 word had spread around the world that these rivers, hills and mountains were lined with gold.
05:50Klondike Gold Rush was the last great adventure in America and the fever around it was probably started from this
05:57big economic downturn we had in 1893,
05:59when our country switched from the silver standard to the gold standard.
06:03So people were already desolate, they'd already lost everything.
06:07So by the time 1897 happened, people were just ready to drop whatever they were doing and come up here
06:12and try and find their own fortunes.
06:16Gold fever had set in and people from all over the world and all walks of life took part in
06:23the Klondike Gold Rush.
06:25But the majority of the prospectors had no experience of mining.
06:29They were salesmen, clerks and tradesmen who had no idea what lay ahead of them.
06:37After gold discovery in the Yukon in 1896, thousands of people started coming through this area.
06:44And it would have changed the landscape for many, many years.
06:48And you can still see artifacts that are an example of that all over the place today.
06:53The Gold Rush is actually a story of human suffering on a vast scale.
06:58100,000 people went on the Gold Rush and only 40,000 of them ever made it to Klondike, let
07:05alone find any gold.
07:12Inexperienced and ill-prepared, the majority of prospectors were forced to return.
07:19Many even lost their lives trying to cross the inhospitable and treacherous landscape.
07:24Of all the stretches of this Gold Rush, perhaps the most iconic quintessential image to emerge is that from the
07:33Chilkoot Trail.
07:35The Chilkoot Trail was a mountain path stretching 33 miles from Dayi in Alaska to the Canadian town of Bennett
07:43in British Columbia.
07:46Historically, it had been used as a trade route for the indigenous Tinglet people.
07:51But its direct access made it the most popular route to the Yukon goldfields.
07:57And there's one particular part of that trail, which was known as the Golden Stairs.
08:03Now, this was not a golden experience.
08:06This was a tough, brutal experience on which people probably lost their lives.
08:11They were climbing up this really sharp incline, carrying as much as they could.
08:16Every man in these images is hoping to make his fortune.
08:24In the early days of the Gold Rush, before the idea of a railway was even conceived,
08:29the majority of people attempting to reach the Yukon were ill-equipped and under-supplied for the harsh conditions.
08:38To limit this, the authorities decided to enforce a new rule on all prospectors entering the territory.
08:47Because the Northwest Mounted Police made it mandatory for all people coming into Canada in search of gold,
08:53to bring a year's supply of goods, which meant they had to pack a ton of goods over the Chilkoot
08:58Trail.
09:00The extra weight they had to carry only added to the misery and danger of the journey.
09:07What they needed was a railroad.
09:11But building one in these conditions, and through this unyielding terrain, was considered impossible.
09:18So they had to continue to travel by foot.
09:22The trail itself was notoriously hard.
09:25In purely physical terms, the terrain was extremely rugged and the weather was unpredictable.
09:31Disease and injury were also a major factor.
09:35In addition to that, the Stampeders were also beset by criminals and conmen trying to rip them off on their
09:41journeys.
09:46Despite the hardships that lay ahead, the lure of the gold kept people coming in their droves.
09:53It's all about gold and raw materials.
09:57But you can't get them out of the earth just by magic.
10:00That needs people, and people need food, and people need housing.
10:04So suddenly, the infrastructure has to grow.
10:07It's not just about transportation, it's about living.
10:10You need to build a town, you need to build medical facilities to keep people alive.
10:15And suddenly, from the dirt, you've got a massive civil and civic engineering project on your hands.
10:27The gold rush had a massive impact on places like Skagway.
10:32This small town was the start of an alternative route to the Chilkoot Trail, known as White Pass.
10:41Many of the prospectors who arrived at Skagway soon realised that the trail was too difficult,
10:46and instead decided to stay on to make their fortunes supplying the 1,000 miners who passed through every week.
10:55Seeking a fortune in gold is hard work.
10:59But you need that support system around you of somewhere to live and somewhere to eat.
11:05And those miners worked hard, but they also played hard.
11:09And people made fortunes completely not connected with the gold by supporting that and catering to everyone's whim.
11:18Goods and services were often supplied at hugely inflated prices,
11:22meaning it was not the gold miners who were making the real money.
11:27The people who always make the money out of gold rushes are the people who exploit those on the rush.
11:34It's the people who service them. It's the innkeepers. It's the people selling labour.
11:41Everything that your gold rush prospector needs has to be paid for at vast cost.
11:50It was a place of opportunities, and people of all professions came to ply their trades.
11:56But there was one thing that the town didn't have. A railway.
12:02Most people considered the task of building a railway to be either too difficult or just simply impossible.
12:10All but one man.
12:12The terrain was rough and unyielding, and they needed a man with similar characteristics to master it.
12:18They found that man in Mike Heaney from Ontario, who had been everything in his lifetime,
12:24from a water carrier to a rail layer and a mule skinner,
12:29before rising to become a surveyor and prospector and an engineer in railways.
12:39Former railroad employee Steve Heitz came to work on the line in the 1970s,
12:45and has been fascinated by its history ever since.
12:51Mike Heaney came up here in February of 1898 to do an independent survey.
12:55He'd heard about the gold rush, and a couple of friends of his were talking about the problems of transportation,
13:01trying to get over the coast range.
13:03And this bottleneck was happening in places like Skagway and Dye, and they couldn't get over the pass.
13:07It was a horse trail, horses were dying, and they couldn't get over the pass.
13:12Guys were having to carry stuff on their backs of, you know, the top of the Chilkoot Pass,
13:16two tons of, you know, a ton of supplies.
13:18And Heaney said, well, the solution obviously is modern transportation, a railroad.
13:22I wonder if one could get built on his own with no other money from anybody else.
13:31Heaney conducted his own survey, and despite the obvious difficulties,
13:35believed it was possible to build a railway, and transport the miners and their goods to and from the goldfields.
13:44He actually was up here, you can imagine, with the wind howling, the snow drifting,
13:49coming up, looking at the lay of the land.
13:52How you'd lay a line, a track, with a reasonable gradient, through this kind of terrain.
13:59Where would you put the track? Heaney figured out how he could put one in here.
14:04But construction on this scale was going to require money and backing,
14:09something Heaney simply did not have.
14:13But a chance encounter in the Skagway saloon was about to change his fortunes.
14:19When he went down to Skagway and by chance ran into a British group,
14:25Sir Thomas Tancree, that represented Close Brothers Financial House in London.
14:29They had decided to come up and take a look and see if a railroad was feasible.
14:33They didn't think they could build one. They talk all night.
14:37They realize who this guy is. He's built railroads in the Rockies.
14:41He knows how to build them. He can be the contractor.
14:44He can help us to put together the... He's the missing link that we need.
14:49But the new partnership between Heaney and his backers was about to come up against a problem.
15:00By 1898 Skagway's population had risen to 8,000, making it the largest city in Alaska.
15:08But it had also become a dangerous and lawless place.
15:12The influx of people and money had started to attract unscrupulous characters
15:18and criminality was beginning to thrive.
15:23It was known as one of the roughest towns in America.
15:26Apparently you could hear gunshots ringing out at all times of the night.
15:30People being shot dead in the streets.
15:32There was around 8,000 people here.
15:35Less than a thousand women out of those 18,000 men.
15:40Gold rushes attracted people seeking their fortunes.
15:44People who wanted to change their lives.
15:46And that made them particularly vulnerable to con men and gangsters
15:50who would prey on the optimism of the feeling by seeing how much they could rip people off.
15:58There were a lot of crooks and spears and con men on the whole gold rush.
16:04But the most notorious was a man called Soapy Smith.
16:12Well, I didn't take that gold and they're never getting it back.
16:15And if any one of my men makes a move to give that gold back, I'll break his neck.
16:18I'll kill him, you hear me? I'll kill him!
16:22Soapy Smith has become a local legend connected with the gold rush.
16:26They even run a regular theatre performance recounting his story,
16:30which became intrinsically linked with the proposed railway.
16:33Well, suddenly another man has run the corridor doing the same.
16:36You know, every town has their local villain and Soapy is, you know, Skagway's local villain
16:42and everyone loves, you know, love the villain.
16:44Soapy is a draw to all the tourists that come to Skagway.
16:49And what would we do, what would Skagway do without a legend like Soapy?
16:56They may not have realised it at the time, but Soapy and Heaney's Railroad
17:01was heading for a showdown that would ultimately have fatal consequences.
17:07There was no law north of 63 for Soapy, except the laws he made for himself.
17:12He and his gang robbed and killed the hapless miners returning from the gold fields.
17:18Soapy is a fascinating character.
17:19He was a con man, so he wasn't just a thug.
17:22You know, he was a leader of a group of men who were conning and swindling people
17:26here in Skagway during the gold rush.
17:30Soapy, whose real name was Jefferson Smith,
17:33gained his nickname by carrying out a sleight-of-hand con-trick on members of the public.
17:39In front of spectators, he would wrap bars of soap in dollar bills of different values,
17:45cover, and then mix them in with ordinary soap,
17:48before auctioning them off to the highest bidder.
17:52He would try to tell people, actually, if you're lucky, you might get one of the bars of soap,
17:57which has got a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around it.
18:00Yeah, there never was a bar of soap with a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around it.
18:05He got arrested on the streets of Denver for that.
18:09They didn't know his first name.
18:11They just had Smith, so they put Soap Smith on the arrest record, and then he became Soapy Smith.
18:19Soapy's career saw him go from a petty con man to the boss of an organized crime gang.
18:26Arriving in Skagway in 1897, he soon set about creating various businesses to swindle the miners,
18:33including a saloon and fake telegraph office.
18:36He even had the local sheriff on his payroll.
18:40But, you know, you name it, every pie in that area, Soapy Smith had his dirty little fingers in him.
18:47Before long, he also had his own armed militia and firmly cemented his grip on the city.
18:55Soapy enjoyed a short period as the unofficial boss of Skagway.
18:59But thanks to the railroad, all of that was about to change.
19:05Things start to go wrong for Soapy when he decides to steal all the gold off one of the prospectors,
19:11a man called J.D. Stewart.
19:13Now, of course, all the locals in Skagway are absolutely furious with Smith
19:17because they know that if word gets back that prospectors, even if they find gold,
19:22are going to have it robbed off them, well, then no-one's going to come, are they?
19:26And, of course, if no-one comes up to Skagway,
19:28then all the people making a living there aren't going to be able to make a living anymore.
19:34For the prospective railroad company, building a new line starting at a town run by a known criminal was bad
19:41business.
19:42To continue with their plans, they would first have to get rid of the man who had nefariously taken control
19:49of Skagway.
19:50Now, things only really begin to change in Skagway when a man called Samuel Graves turns up.
19:56Now, Graves is going to become a really important figure because he's president of the railroad
20:01and therefore has an enormous amount of potential power.
20:05This is clearly going to set the scene for a big clash between Graves representing the railroad and representing the
20:13future
20:13and Soapy representing corruption.
20:20Seeing Soapy as a potential threat to the railroad, Graves set about devising a plan to have him removed from
20:26Skagway once and for all.
20:29It's Graves who rallies the townspeople to actually get rid of Smith and to chase him basically out of town.
20:37And they formed a committee which saw its mission as protecting the town.
20:44The committee decided to hold a meeting at Juneau Wharf on Skagway's waterfront to discuss Soapy, the future of the
20:52town and its railway.
20:55When he got wind of their plans, Soapy turned up to confront the committee.
21:00Frank Reed was one of four men placed on guard that fateful evening.
21:07Soapy is approaching the end of the dock and Frank Reed has got the six gun.
21:12And Smith, you can't come down in here.
21:14You know, Reed, you know, this is a public wharf.
21:17As Soapy is approaching, he's got his Winchester rifle.
21:21He swings it like a club to try to knock Frank out of the way.
21:25And that's all the provocation Frank Reed needs.
21:27He reaches down.
21:29He pulls the six gun clear of the holster.
21:30He pulls the trigger.
21:32The hammer of the pistol falls on a faulty cartridge.
21:35Click.
21:36Reed pulls another round into the chamber.
21:38As he does that, Soapy now sees death in Reed's eyes.
21:42And he swings the barrel of the Winchester back to dead center, grabbing at the trigger.
21:46Both men fire simultaneously.
21:48And Smith takes around the heart.
21:50He's dead before he hits the dock.
21:51Reed takes a bolt in the groin that shatters his pelvis.
21:53And at that moment, all the vigilantes come running out of the warehouse.
21:58It scares the heck out of Smith's gang, and they all run for the hills.
22:04With Soapy's demise, the railroad company was eager to put Mike Heaney to work.
22:09But trains were still a relatively new invention.
22:12And the same people who had helped to get rid of Soapy
22:15were concerned about the effect a railway would have on their town.
22:22Carl Mulvihill is a descendant of a pioneering family that came to Skagway in 1900.
22:30Locomotive number 52 was the first locomotive for a railroad in Alaska.
22:36At the time it arrived, the railroad was fighting with the city council on where the railroad track would go.
22:46Well, indeed, there was a lot of resistance to the railroad by the merchants along Broadway.
22:52Because they were afraid of the trains coming up and down Broadway.
22:56All that smoke, all that traffic and the noise and the vibrations from the railroad trains.
23:03They were concerned it would affect their bottom line.
23:09Heaney wanted the tracks to start in the middle of Broadway Street,
23:13in the very heart of Skagway.
23:15To do this, he would need to persuade the council to go against the wishes of the locals
23:20and grant him permission.
23:25So after many days of arguing with the city council,
23:29they got verbal permission from the council to put the tracks up Broadway Street.
23:36They jumped on this as fast as they could.
23:40This picture shows the railroad tracks running, being constructed right down Broadway.
23:46We're looking north on Broadway.
23:47This is a cross street is 6th Avenue.
23:54They dug up in the middle of Broadway, laid their ties and the rails.
23:59And the next morning when the public woke up, the railroad was already laid up Broadway.
24:05There's no longer a question of where the railroad would go from there.
24:16With the first tracks laid, the railway was now underway.
24:20But getting it started was the easy part.
24:23Having it fully completed within one year was the real challenge.
24:29And it didn't take Heaney long to come up against his first obstacle.
24:35As soon as they got out of town, away from the river valley, they started having to climb.
24:39They put a 4% grade on this section for six to seven mile post.
24:43They had to literally blast through a gigantic wall of granite right at seven mile post.
24:49It's called Rocky Point.
24:53The mountains through which the railway would run were made of granite, an incredibly hard and dense rock type.
25:00Something they would have to contend with.
25:03Granite is great to build on.
25:05Yeah, that's fantastic if it's on a flat level slab.
25:08But of course it isn't.
25:10Just where you want to get your railway, there are massive amounts of granite.
25:14And to blast your way through that, these guys were setting off huge, huge explosions.
25:23For the train to run along the side of the mountain, they would first have to carve out a level
25:28shelf on which to lay the tracks.
25:31And Heaney had to blast right through this section, which was across and down.
25:37And this entire mountainside had to be removed to be able to put the railroad track through this cut.
25:45Well, you can see in this picture that there's a big rocky slope here.
25:49And in order to cut their grade through that area, the workers would have to lower themselves on these ropes
25:58and then place their charges.
26:06Heaney was once quoted as saying, give me enough dynamite and I'll build you a road to hell.
26:13So that's what they did.
26:15450 tons of dynamite were placed at his disposal and the mountains were soon shaking from the blasts.
26:25In fact, some of them were so big, they were moving mountains and changing the courses of rivers just with
26:31a single explosion.
26:37Work was hard and conditions tough.
26:41Heaney had a schedule to keep to, and in a time when health and safety was not a priority, accidents
26:47were bound to happen.
26:51The working conditions up there were absolutely appalling.
26:55Of course, trying to keep these timings and these budgets, the contractors had to cut corners in some places.
27:02A permanent testament to the dangers of building this railroad is a place along the route known as Black Cross
27:09Rock, where two workers, Al Juno and Morris Dunn, tragically lost their lives.
27:16Well, the two guys are setting off a charge, and the charge goes off and the whole piece of the
27:24mountain just literally falls right on the blasting crew.
27:29And it buries them, and they're, they, Mike Keaney comes up and takes a look at it and says,
27:35What do you think, boss? What do you, what do you, what do you, you want to try to blast
27:37this thing to pieces and get their bodies out from underneath it for a proper burial?
27:41And heaney looked at it and he said, there is no more fitting monument for these men than this giant
27:50rock.
27:51Bury them right here.
27:53Heaney put up a big cross right on the rock with their names on it and the date.
27:57And it's called Black Cross Rock.
27:59It's the monument, the memorial, to all of the workmen who died building the railroad.
28:06There was 30, 35 men that lost their lives in the construction.
28:13But accidents weren't the only thing that Heaney had to contend with, as keeping his workforce became a constant battle.
28:23There was a gold strike in Atlin, 2,000 and 2,500 men all quit immediately, drew their pay and
28:32went to Atlin, take along the shovels and picks with them.
28:39The building of this railway is very interesting because it wasn't done 100% by skilled navigators, people who build
28:47railways.
28:48It was also built, to a large degree, by opportunists, people who happened to be in the area and wanted
28:55to pay pack it.
28:56And of course, as soon as someone heard a whisper of gold, that workforce, they're off.
29:01They're off chasing their golden dream.
29:04And suddenly your project has no workers.
29:09They always had a labour problem because people are either coming, a few working and the rest are going.
29:17All of these problems put a huge strain on Heaney's incredibly tight schedule.
29:22And he had good reason to be worried, as the fast approaching winter months on the Alaskan-Canadian border are
29:29some of the harshest on Earth.
29:33They tried to build as much as they could in the Alaskan summer with these almost endless days.
29:38But it was then that the tidal slipped a bit.
29:40And we had to build for the Alaskan winter as well because of sub-zero temperatures, which is one thing
29:46to try and live through, but it's another thing to try and work through as well.
29:51It doesn't matter what you're trying to do.
29:53If it's 40 below, everything is going to be a challenge and it's going to take longer and it's going
29:59to be far harder on you physically.
30:03Winter did eventually set in.
30:06But despite the freezing conditions, Heaney and his crew persevered with their efforts to reach the summit.
30:16Well, here's a view of the bridge carpenters at work constructing a bridge that is next to Tunnel Mountain.
30:25And as you can see, it's a wintry scene. It's bitterly cold out there.
30:30It's not so much the cold itself, but the windshield factors.
30:35So we can get minus 40, 50, 60 degrees Fahrenheit up there in the pass.
30:40Or even greater.
30:44I've heard tell of minus 100.
30:51During the construction, 75% of the time was shoveling snow off the grade and 25% of actual working
31:00on the grade.
31:02You know, you could only work for, say, an hour.
31:05Then you have to go back in and warm up.
31:07Another crew would come out and work for another hour.
31:15The construction of this railway was a huge undertaking and extremely costly in both monetary and human terms.
31:23But there was a good reason for building it.
31:29The Chilkoot Trail had provided one access point to the Yukon goldfields.
31:34But there was also another equally dangerous route.
31:37And it was hoped that the railway would allow passengers to circumnavigate it.
31:43You had an alternative route, and that was called the White Pass.
31:47Well, that's the nice name for it, because actually it became known as Dead Horse Gulch.
31:53And there's a good reason for that.
31:55Due to its steepness, anyone wanting to use the Chilkoot Trail had to carry their supplies by hand.
32:02Whereas prospectors wanting to use mules or pack horses were forced to take the longer but less steep route starting
32:09at Skagway.
32:12Essentially, right now below the track, from here on up to the summit, is the geographic feature called Dead Horse
32:18Gulch.
32:19It's where basically the wagon road ended.
32:21They couldn't build the wagon road beyond here.
32:23And Brackets Road ended at White Pass City.
32:26And here, you transferred the freight off the wagon and packed it onto the pack horse or the mules, and
32:32then headed up the actual horse trail.
32:36The story of the horses burdened with the task of crossing it is one of the biggest tragedies of the
32:42gold rush.
32:44Pack horses, which should have been long retired and that were often too sick or frail to work, were being
32:50shipped into Skagway to be sold to the prospectors at hugely inflated prices.
32:59Numerous contemporary accounts speak of horses snapping their legs in the crevasses, drowning under the weight of their loads as
33:06they crossed the river and eating the poisonous grass along the trail.
33:14Those that fell or were unable to carry on were either shot or left to die.
33:213,000 pack horses were driven to death by their owners on the trail that went from Skagway up to
33:27Lake Bennett.
33:28And the bones of those animals are literally bleaching down the bottom of the canyon to this very day.
33:42By the February of 1899, Heaney and his construction team reached the summit of White Pass.
33:51Here's the summit coming up ahead of us, going to the White Pass summit.
33:58If there was a single achievement that represented the fact that the railroad would finally actually be successful and get
34:06built, it was getting track to White Pass summit.
34:08At this moment the entire Yukon opened up. This was the gateway to the Yukon.
34:14They had a big excursion train, they brought dignitaries, they popped champagne, everybody wearing parkas, the wind was howling, the
34:21tents were all set up, they had tables inside.
34:23It was successful, they pulled it off. It was the success of the Enterprise could now be grasped. You had
34:32opened the north.
34:39While reaching the summit gave them course for celebration, they were still less than half way through constructing the planned
34:46route to the town of White Horse.
34:49It would take them a further five months to reach the Canadian town of Bennett.
34:54At the time, Bennett was a major stop off point for the gold rush, as it marked the end of
34:59both Dead Horse Gulch and the Chilkoot Trail.
35:05So here we can see some artefacts, cultural resources we call them, that are left over from this area where
35:13there were a few hotels.
35:15There was the Dawson Hotel, the Klondike Hotel, the Palace, as well as the Arctic Hotel and Restaurant. We're in
35:23this location of Bennett.
35:26Who makes the money from the Klondike? Is it the prospectors? No. Only very, very few of them do.
35:33It's the hotel owners, it's the innkeepers, it's the suppliers of horses, you name it.
35:39Everything a prospector needs has to be bought. The people making money are those doing the selling.
35:47And one of the many people in Bennett providing their services to the prospectors was the grandfather of US President
35:54Donald Trump.
35:57One of the people that made so much money from the miners was actually Frederick Trump.
36:01And he turned up in Bennett with a hotel for some of those miners and those around them.
36:09It was alleged at the time that Frederick Trump offered in his hotel not just swan meat harvested from the
36:14river,
36:15but also sex as well to keep those miners happy as well.
36:19So actually you can look at this very kind of seedy hotel and the fortune that Frederick Trump made from
36:28it
36:28as being the foundation of the Trump family money.
36:39The final part of the line was constructed at two separate points.
36:44While one team worked to lay the tracks from Carcross to Whitehorse,
36:48another crew worked from Bennett to Carcross.
36:54The following year, on the 29th of July 1900, the final spike was driven into the ground at Carcross,
37:02marking the completion of the White Pass and Yukon route.
37:12The fact that Whitehorse was now linked by rail made towns like Bennett practically redundant.
37:20And as its population and visitor traffic dramatically decreased, businesses soon started to close.
37:29But one man had already predicted that Whitehorse would be the new boomtown
37:34and made certain that he would not miss out.
37:39Frederick Trump realised that Bennett was being subverted as being a town to make the money.
37:44He actually had his entire hotel put on barges and moved up the river to a brand new location
37:50where he could make more money for the miners in a different place.
37:57After the route was officially opened, they continued to make improvements to the railroad.
38:03New tunnels were dug out and bridges added along the line to make the journey more efficient.
38:10They even started to diversify and link the railroad with other forms of transport.
38:16As soon as the White Pass and Yukon Railroad reached Whitehorse along the Yukon River,
38:23the railroad company bought an entire fleet of stern wheel steamboats.
38:28That allowed the White Pass and Yukon route, which was what that was.
38:33The route using White Pass systems to be able to connect the gold fields to the international marketplace.
38:38You could bring things in and out of the north.
38:42It was all created to supply the mining industry with an efficient infrastructure system.
38:49But by 1899, the gold rush was all but over and was starting to be replaced by large-scale commercial
38:56mining.
38:59It was pretty much that system that kept the mines in the summertime working,
39:05the people moving in and out of the Yukon that lived there.
39:09There were less and less and less of them though.
39:12The mining interest during the 1930s almost completely shut down.
39:16It was in fact World War II that actually revitalized the White Pass Railroad.
39:25Being the closest point between the US and Japan,
39:29Alaska became strategically important due to the threat of invasion.
39:34It was proposed that a highway be built to ensure the quick movement of communications,
39:39and if need be, troops.
39:43By chance, the White Pass and Yukon Railroad ran from Skagway right up to Whitehorse in the middle of this.
39:49And if you could supply construction up the railroad, you could then build the Alaska Highway both north and south
39:55for construction heads instead of just two.
39:58Cut the time in half.
39:59And suddenly the railroad was taken over, 3,000 troops land.
40:03The army takes over the docks, take over the town, takes over the railroad.
40:06They start running 34 trains a day on a railroad that back in the mid-30s was running one single
40:12train a month in the dead of winter.
40:15American engineers have conquered the untamed Canadian wilderness.
40:19Mountains and muskeg and trackless pine tangle have given way to the Alaska Highway.
40:25Today, it is open for the convoying of supplies to the Alaskan war front.
40:301,520 miles of highway built through the Canadian north in nine months because primarily White Pass and Yukon Railroad
40:41being right in the middle to be able to build north and south.
40:48After the war, the railroad was given another lifeline.
40:53A large mining company put forward a plan to open one of the world's largest open-pit lead zinc mines
40:59in the heart of the Yukon.
41:02They named the mine Farrow.
41:05Farrow became the biggest mine in the history of the Yukon Territory.
41:09It was giant. It was world-class lead zinc mine.
41:16The railway was kept in operation solely because of that single mine.
41:22You had all your eggs in one basket.
41:24At this particular point, that giant mine was worth 80% of the railroad's business.
41:28If anything went wrong in the commodities market, if the mine would shut down, the railroad, of course, would be
41:33immediately affected.
41:34And pretty much that's what happened.
41:38In 1982, the world metal market crashed and Farrow Mine was closed, sealing the fate of the White Pass and
41:47Yukon route.
41:50And in October, October the 8th, 1982, the railroad shut down.
41:56Just as the gold rush, its prospectors, gangsters and pioneers had become a distant memory,
42:03so too, it seemed, with the railroad that had brought them all together.
42:13But it was, in fact, for all those reasons that the railroad was able to survive.
42:19Its wild and untamed landscape, the natural beauty, and all of the stories held in its incredible history are what
42:28has sparked the imagination of thousands of tourists who now decide to travel here.
42:34And who could believe that thousands of people, even today, want to go to the middle of nowhere in order
42:42to take in the beauty.
42:43And, thankfully, this amazing railway is still there and still running to entertain us.
42:50Today, people are still taking that same voyage by boat to the harbour of Skagway, and riding on those same
42:57tracks painstakingly built by Mike Heaney.
43:02More than a century ago, people flocked to the area to try and get the gold.
43:06Now, people flock to the area to go and see the railway.
43:11All in the hope of getting a small glimpse into the journey taken by the pioneering men and women of
43:18the Klondike Gold Rush.
43:20To me, the railway is still a glorious survivor of a different age.
43:25You know, it still runs today with different railway locomotives in stock, but still takes people through that incredible scenery.
43:32It is a route unlike any other.
43:36The secret of the railroad has been its luck, and then the hard work of the men and women who've
43:42stuck with it to try to carry that luck through and take advantage of it.
43:49That's, that's the secret of the railroad.
44:19that's the secret of the Unternehmen that actually wouldn'tision be exploiting
44:20and transfiguration I joined you before.
44:21I have no way to get to the impossible details, but I were not giving you a long sight.
44:21So I think that I have no choice.
Comments