Forbidden History - America's Final Frontier: The Yukon Railway

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we discover how over 100 years ago a remote railroad fought against impossible odds in order to transport the prospectors of the Klondike gold rush. From gangsters and gold miners to Donald Trump's grandfather, this is the story of how a remote railway changed the lives of those who came in search of the American dream. Cast List: Tim Dunn: Railway Historian Karl Gurke: Historian & Archaeologist Fiona Giardino: Parks Canada Ranger Steve Hites: Former Railroad Employee Brittany Masloski: Tour Guide Guy Walters: Author & Historian Dominic Selwood: Historian & Journalist Claire Barratt: Industrial Engineer Jonathan Baldwin: Artistic Director, The Days of ‘98 Carl Mulvihill: Local Historian Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. A railway that carves its way through the wilds of Alaska to the gold fields of Canada's Yukon territory. It's the Western on steroids. Man against nature.

Man against mountains. Man against winter. Man against himself. In this episode, we discover how. how over 100 years ago, one pioneer fought against impossible odds in order to transport prospectors taking part in the last great American adventure, the Klondike Gold Rush. It was known as one of the roughest towns in America.

Apparently you could hear gunshots ringing out at all times of the night. You can look at this very kind of seedy hotel as being the foundation of the Trump family money. from gangsters and gold miners to Donald Trump's grandfather. This is how a remote railway changed the lives of those who came in search of the American dream. Yukon, Canada, the least populated and westernmost federal state in the country. It's home to a landscape that's as beautiful and breathtaking as it is harsh and unforgiving. For hundreds of years, this rugged and mountainous region has been a destination for hunters,

traders, pioneers, and prospectors. But in more recent times, people have been flocking here for a very different reason. Opened in 1900, the White Pass and Yukon route originally ran from the Alaskan town of Skagway to the capital city of the Yukon Territory, Whitehorse. But in an area that to this day remains remote and scarcely inhabited, why was this railway built in the first place? This is pretty terrifying territory to try and build anything. You think these are deep valleys and tall mountains and deep forests up here.

And suddenly, if you're walking along today, you happen upon a railway line. Well, it's a civil engineering feat. It was an amazing accomplishment during the height of the gold rush. Before the latter half of the 19th century, this part of North America remained a wild and mostly untouched frontiers. home only to the indigenous First Nations people of Canada. This is part of the traditional territory of the Carcross Tagish First Nation. We've been using this place for time immemorial and we are inland clinket and tagish people.

We use it as a traditional hunting and fishing location and have been for many generations including my great-grandparents and those before them as well. Apart from a small number of European hunters and fur trade, few outsiders had ever thought of making the arduous journey to the Yukon. But the discovery of a lifetime was about to change the region's future forever more. It's always been just like a gold rush card game or roulette wheel. By quirk of fate, the right people at the right place at the right time and right events that would happen. Brittany Maslowski, known in Skagway as Dakota Panning, is a guide working for the right place at the right time and right events that would happen.

Brittany Maslowski, known in Skagway as Dakota Panning, is a guide working for Alaska 360, which operates what's known as a dredge town, offering tourists the chance to experience what became known as the Klondike Gold Rush. First Gold Strike was, is credited to George Washington Carmack. He's an American, and he was a sort of a lifetime prospector. He was just hanging out up in the Yukon. George Carmack and his brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, a member of the Taggish First Nations people, had been tipped off by a fellow prospector

about an area he believed was rich in the valuable medal. Went up to a creek called Rabbit Creek, and they were panning, seeing what the situation was, and he ended up pulling $5 out of a pan at Rabbit Creek. And back then that was a huge find. That kind of meant, you know, we should stay here and check it out. By 1897, Word had spread around the world that the area's rivers, hills, and mountains were lined with gold.

Klonite Gold Rush was the last great adventure in America. And the fever around it was probably started from this big economic downturn. We had in 1893 when our country switched from the silver standard to the gold standard. So people were already desolate, they'd already lost everything. So by the time 1897 happened, people were just ready to drop. whatever they were doing and come up here and try and find their own fortunes. Gold fever had set in, and people from all over the world and all walks of life took part in the Klondike Gold Rush. But the majority of the prospectors had no experience of mining.

They were salesmen, clerks, and tradesmen who had no idea what lay ahead of them. After gold discovery in the Yukon in 1896, thousands of people started coming through this area. And it would have changed the landscape for many, many years. And you can still see artifacts that are an example of that all over the place today. The gold rush is actually a story of human suffering on a vast scale. 100,000 people went on the gold rush, and only 40,000 of them ever made it to Klondike, let alone find any gold. Inexperienced and ill-prepared, the majority of prospectors were forced to return.

forced to return. Many even lost their lives, trying to cross the inhospitable and treacherous landscape. Of all the stretches of this gold rush, perhaps the most iconic, quintessential image to emerge is that from the Chilkoot Trail. The Chilkoot Trail was a mountain path stretching 33 miles from Dai in Alaska to the Canadian town of Bennett in British Columbia. Historically, it had been used as a trade route for the indigenous clinket people. But its direct access made it the most popular route to the Yukon Goldfields. And there's one particular part of that trail which was known as the Golden Stairs. Now this was not a golden experience, this was a tough, brutal experience and which people

probably lost their lives. They were climbing up this really sharp incline, carrying as much as they could, Every man in these images is hoping to make his fortune. In the early days of the gold rush before the idea of a railway was even conceived, the majority of people attempting to reach the Yukon were ill-equipped and under-supplied for the harsh conditions. To limit this, the authorities decided to enforce a new rule on all prospectors entering the territory. Because the Northwest Mounted Police made it mandatory for all people coming into Canada, in search of gold to bring a year's supply of goods,

which meant they had to pack a ton of goods over the Chilku Trail. The extra weight they had to carry only added to the misery and danger of the journey. What they needed was a railroad. But building one in these conditions and through this unyielding terrain was considered impossible. So they had to continue to travel by foot. The trail itself was notorious,

notoriously hard. In purely physical terms, the terrain was extremely rugged and the weather was unpredictable. Disease and injury were also a major factor. In addition to that, the stampedars were also beset by criminals and conmen trying to rip them off on their journeys. Despite the hardships that lay ahead, the lure of the gold kept people coming in their droves. It's all about gold and raw materials. But you can't get them out of the earth just by magic. That needs people and people need food and people need housing. So suddenly the infrastructure has to grow.

It's not just about transportation, it's about living. You need to build a town, you need to build medical facilities to keep people alive. And suddenly, from the dirt, you've got a massive civil and civic engineering project on your hands. The gold rush had a massive impact on places like Skagway. This small town was the start of an alternative route to the Chilkoot Trail, known as White Pass. Many of the prospectors who arrived at Skagway soon realized that the trail was too difficult and instead decided to stay on to make their fortunes, supplying the 1,000 miners who pass through every week. Seeking a fortune in gold is hard.

hard work, yeah, but you need that support system around you of somewhere to live and somewhere to eat. And those miners worked hard, but they also played hard. And people made fortunes completely not connected with the gold by supporting that and catering to everyone's whim. Goods and services were often supplied at hugely inflated prices, meaning it was not the gold miners who were making the real money. The people who always make the money out of gold rushes are the people who exploit those on the rush. It's the people who service them. It's the innkeepers. It's the people selling labor. Everything that your gold rush prospector needs has to be paid for at vast cost.

It was a place of opportunities, and people of all professions came to ply their trades. But there was one thing that the town didn't have, a railway. Most people considered the task of building a railway to be either too difficult or just simply impossible. All but one man. The terrain was rough and unyielding, and they needed a man with similar characteristics to master it. They found that man in Mike Hini from Ontario, who had been everything in his lifetime, from a water carrier to a rail layer and a mule skinner, before rising to become a surveyor and prospector and an engineer, in railways.

Former railroad employee, Steve Heights, came to work on the line in the 1970s and has been fascinated by its history ever since. Mike Heaney came up here in February of 1898 to do an independent survey. He'd heard about the gold rush. And a couple friends of his were talking about the problems of transportation

trying to get over the coast range. And this bottleneck was happening in places like Skagway and Dai, and they couldn't get over the pass. It was a horse trail, horses were dying, and they couldn't get over the pass. Guys were having to carry stuff on their backs of the top of the Chilkoot Pass, two tons of, you know, a ton of supplies. And Heaney said, well, the solution obviously is modern transportation, a railroad. I wonder if one could get built on his own with no other money from anybody else.

Heaney conducted his own survey, and despite the obvious difficulties, believed it was possible to build a railway and transport the miners and their goods to and from the gold fields. But construction on this scale was going to require money and backing, something Heaney simply did not have. But a chance encounter in a Skagway saloon was about to change his fortunes. When he went down to Skagway, and by chance ran into a British group, Sir Thomas Tancre that represented Close Brothers Financial House in London.

They had decided to come up and take a look at see if a railroad was feasible. They didn't think they could build one. They talk all night. They realize who this guy is. He's built railroads in the Rockies. He knows how to build him. He can be the contractor. He can help us to put together the...

He's the missing wink that we need. But the new partnership between Heaney and his backers was about to come up against a problem. We continue the story after the break. In 1898, Skagway's population had risen to 8,000, making it the largest city in Alaska. But it had also become a dangerous and lawless place. The influx of people and money

had started to attract scrupulous characters, and criminality was beginning to thrive. It was known as one of the roughest towns in America. Apparently you could hear gunshots ringing out at all times of the night, people being shot dead in the streets. There was around 8,000 people here, less than 1,000 women out of those 18,000. men. Gold rushes attracted people seeking their fortunes, people who wanted to change their lives,

and that made them particularly vulnerable to con men and gangsters who would prey on the optimism of the feeling by seeing how much they could rip people off. There were a lot of crooks and spivs and con men on the whole gold rush, but the most notorious was a man called Soapy Smith. Soapy Smith has has become a local legend connected with the Gold Rush. They even run a regular theater performance recounting his story, which became intrinsically linked with the proposed railway. You know, every town has their local villain, and Soapy is, you know, Skagway's local villain,

and everyone loves to, you know, love the villain. Soapy is a draw to all the tourists that come to Skagway, and what would we do? What would Skagway do without a legend like Soapy? They may not have realized it at the time, but Soapy and Hini's railroad was heading for a showdown that would ultimately have fatal consequences. Soapie is a fascinating character. He was a con man, so it wasn't just a thug.

You know, he was a leader of a group of men who were conning and swindling people here in Skagway during the Gold Rush. Soapy, whose real name was Jefferson Smith, gained his nickname by carrying out a sleight-of-hand con trick on members of the public. In front of spectators, he would wrap bars of soap in dollar bills of different values, cover, and then mix them with ordinary soap before auctioning them off to the highest bidder. He would try to tell people, actually, if you're lucky, you might get one of the bars of soap which has got a $100 bill wrapped around it.

There never was a bar of soap with a $100 bill wrapped around it. He got arrested on the streets of Denver for that. They didn't know his first name. They just had Smith, so they put Soap Smith on the arrest record, and then he became Soapy Smith. Soapy's career saw him go from a petty con man to the boss of an organized crime gang. Arriving in Skagway in 1897, he soon set about creating various businesses to swindle the miners, including a saloon and fake telegraph office. He even had the local sheriff on his payroll.

But you name it every pie in that area, Soapie Smith had his dirty little fingers in him. Before long, he also had his own armed militia and firmly cemented his grip on the city. Soapy enjoyed a short period as the unofficial boss of Skagway. But thanks to the railroad, all of that was about to change. Things start to go wrong for Soapy when he decides to steal all the gold off one of the prospectors, a man called J.D. Now, of course, all the locals in Skagway are absolutely furious with Smith because they know that if word gets back to prospectors, even if they find gold, are going to have it robbed off them, well, then no one's going to come, are they? And of course, if no one comes up to Skagway, then all the people making a living there aren't going to be able to make a living anymore. For the prospective railroad company, building a new line starting at a town run by a known criminal was bad business. To continue with their plans, they would first have to get rid of the man

who had nefariously taken control of Skagway. Now things only really begin to change in Skagway when a man called Samuel Graves turns up. Now Graves is going to become a really important figure because he's president of the railroad and therefore has an enormous amount of potential power. This is clearly going to set the scene for a big clash between Graves representing the railroad, representing the future and Soapy representing corruption. Seeing Soapy as a potential threat to the railroad, Graves set about devising a plan to have him removed from Skagway once and for all.

It's Graves who rallies the townspeople to actually get rid of Smith and to chase him basically out of town. And they formed a committee which saw its mission as protecting the town. The committee decided to hold a meeting at Juno Wharf on Skagway's waterfront to discuss Soapy, the future of the town, and its railway. When he got wind of their plans, Soapy turned up to confront the committee. Frank Reed was one of four men placed on guard that fateful evening. Soapy is approaching the end of the dock and Frank Reed has got the sixth gun.

And Smith, you can't come down in here. You know, Reed, you know, this is a public wharf. As Soapie is approaching, he's got his Winchester rifle. He swings it like a club to try to knock Frank out of the way. And that's all the provocation Frank Reed needs. He reaches down. He pulls the sick gun clear of the holster. He pulls the trigger.

The hammer of the pistol falls on a faulty cartridge. Click. Reed pulls another round into the chamber as he does that. Soapy now sees death in Reed's eyes. And he swings the barrel of the Winchester back to dead center, grabbing at the trigger. Both men fire simultaneously. And Smith takes around the heart, he's dead before he hits the dock, Reed takes a bolt,

the groin that shatters his pelvis. And at that moment, all the vigilantes come running out of the warehouse. It scares the heck out of Smith's gang, and they all run for the hills. With Soapy's demise, the railroad company was eager to put Mike Heaney to work. But trains were still a relatively new invention. And the same people who had helped to get rid of Soapy were concerned about the effect a railway would have on their town. Carl Mulvahill is a descendant of a pioneering family that came to Skagway in 1900.

Locomotive number 52 was the first locomotive for a railroad in Alaska. At the time it arrived, the railroad was fighting with the city council on where the railroad track would go. Well, indeed, there was a lot of resistance to the railroad by the merchants along Broadway, and because they were afraid of the trains coming up and down, Broadway, all that smoke, all that traffic and the noise and the vibrations from the railroad trains, they were concerned it would affect their bottom line. Heaney wanted the tracks to start in the middle of Broadway Street,

in the very heart of Skagway. To do this, he would need to persuade the council to go against the wishes of the locals and grant him permission. So after many days of arguing with the city council, they got verbal permission from the council to put the tracks up Broadway Street. They jumped on this as fast as they could. They dug up in the middle of Broadway,

laid their ties and the rails. And next morning when the public woke up, the railroad was already laid up Broadway. There's no longer a question of where the railroad would go from there. With the first tracks laid, the railroad was now underway, but getting it started was the easy part. Having it fully completed with one year was the real challenge. And it didn't take Heaney long to come up against his first obstacle. We continue the story after the break.

They had to literally blast through a gigantic wall of granite right at seven mile post. It's called Rocky Point. The mountains through which the railroad... railway would run were made of granite, an incredibly hard and dense rock type. Something they would have to contend with. Granite is great to build on, yeah? That's fantastic if it's on a flat level slab, but of course it isn't. Just where you want to get your railway, there are massive amounts of granite. And to blast your way through that, these guys were setting off huge, huge explosions.

For the train to run along the side of the mountain, they would first have to carve out a level shelf on which to lay the tracks. In order to cut their grade through that area, the workers would have to lower themselves on these ropes and then place their charges. Heaney was once quoted as saying, Give me enough dynamite and I'll build you a road to hell. So that's what they did. 450 tons of dynamite were placed at his disposal,

and the mountains were soon shaking from the blasts. In fact, some of them were so big, they were moving mountains and changing the courses of rivers just with a single explosion. Work was hard and conditions tough. Heaney had a schedule to keep to, and in a time when health and safety was not a priority, accidents were bound to happen. The working conditions up there were absolutely appalling.

Of course, trying to keep these timings and these budgets, the contractors have to cut corners in some places. A permanent testament to the dangers of building this railroad is a place along the route known as Black Cross Rock, where two workers, Al Juno and Morris Dunn tragically lost their lives. Well, the two guys are setting off a charge, and the charge goes off, The whole piece of the mountain just literally falls right on the blasting crew.

And it buries them. And they, they, Mike Keeney comes up and takes a look at it and says, What do you think, boss? What do you, what you? You want to try to blast this thing of the pieces and get their bodies out from underneath them for a proper burial? And he looked at it and he said, there is no more fitting monuments for these men than this giant rock. bury them right here. Heaney put up a big cross right on the rock

with their names on it and the date. And it's called Black Cross Rock. It's the monument, the memorial, to all of the workmen who died building the railroad. There was 35 men that lost their lives in the construction. But accidents weren't the only thing that Heaney had to contend with, as keeping his workforce became a constant battle.

There was a gold strike in Atlin, 2,500 men all quit immediately, drew their pay and went to Atlin, take along the shovels and pick Swartham. The building of this railway is very interesting because it wasn't done 100% by skilled navigators, people who build railways. It was also built to a large degree by opportunists, people who happened to be in the area and wanted a pay packet. And of course, as soon as someone heard a whisper of gold, that workforce, they're off. They're off chasing their golden dream. And suddenly your project has no workers. You always had a labor problem because people are either coming, a few working, and the rest are going.

All of these problems put a huge strain on Haney's incredibly tight schedule. Andy had good reason to be worried, as the fast approaching winter months on the Alaskan-Canadian border are some of the harshest on earth. They tried to build as much as they could in the Alaskan summer with these almost endless days, but it was then that the digital slipped a bit and they had to build to the Alaskan winter as well.

Of course you have sub-zero temperatures, which is one thing to try and live through, but it's another thing to try and work through as well. It doesn't matter what you're trying to do. If it's 40 below, everything is going to be a challenge and it's going to take longer and it's going to be far harder on you physically.

Winter did eventually set in, but despite the freezing conditions, Heaney and his crew persevered with their efforts to reach the summit. It's not so much the cold itself, but the windshield factors, so we can get minus 40, 50, 60 degrees Fahrenheit up there in the past, or even greater. I've heard tell of minus 100. During the construction, 75% of the time was shoveling snow off their grade and 25% of actual working on the grade. You know, you could only work for, say, an hour, and you have to go back in and warm up.

Another crew would come out and work for another hour. The construction of the railway was a huge undertaking and extremely costly in both monetary and human terms. But there was a good reason for building it. The Chilkoot Trail had provided one access to the Yukon Goldfields. But there was also another equally dangerous route, and it was hoped that the railway would allow passengers to circumnavigate it. You had an alternative route, and that was called the White Pass. Well, that's the nice name for it, because actually it became known as Dead Horse Gulch,

and there's a good reason for that. Due to its steepness, anyone wanting to use the Chilk, Chilkoot Trail had to carry their supplies by hand, whereas prospectors wanting to use mules or packhorses were forced to take the longer but less steep route starting at Skagway. From here on up to the summit is the geographic feature called Dead Horse Gulch. It's where the, basically, the wagon road ended. They couldn't build the wagon road beyond here, and brackets road ended at White Pass City. And here you transferred the freight off the wagon and packed it onto the packhorse.

or the mules, and then headed up the actual horse trail. The story of the horses burdened with the task of crossing it is one of the biggest tragedies of the gold rush. Pack horses, which should have been long retired that were often too sick or frail to work, were being shipped into Skagway to be sold to the prospectors at hugely inflated prices. Numerous contemporary accounts speak of the horse's tragic demise. Those that fell or were unable to carry on, were either shot or left to die. Three thousand pack horses were driven to death by their owners on the trail that went from Skagway way up to Lake Bennett. And the bones of those animals are literally bleaching down the bottom

of the canyon to this very day. By February of 1890, Heaney and his construction team reached the summit of White Pass. If there was a single achievement, that represented the fact that the railroad would finally actually be successful and get built. It was getting track to white past something. At this moment, the entire Yukon opened up. This was the gateway to the Yukon. They had a big excursion train.

They brought dignitaries. They popped champagne. Everybody wearing parkas. The wind was howling. The tents were all set up. They had tables inside. It was successful. They pulled it off.

It was the success of the enterprise could now be grasped, you had opened the north. While reaching the summit, gave them cause for celebration, they were still less than halfway through constructing the planned route to the town of Whitehorse. It would take them a further five months to reach the Canadian town of Bennett. At the time, Bennett was a major stop-off point for the gold rush, as it marked the end of both Dead Horse Gulch and the Chilkoot Trail. Who makes the money from the Klondike?

Is it the prospectors? No. Only very, very few of them do. It's the hotel owners, it's the innkeepers, it's the suppliers of horses, you name it. Everything a prospector needs has to be bought. The people making money are those doing the selling. And one of the many people in Bennett providing their services to the prospectors was the grandfather of US President Donald Trump.

One of the people that made so much money from the miners was actually Frederick Trump, and he turned up in Bennett with a hotel for some of those miners and those around them. It was alleged at the time that Frederick Trump offered in his hotel, not just swan meat harvested from the river, but also sex as well, to keep those miners happy as well. So actually you can look at this very kind of seedy hotel, and the fortune that Frederick Trump made from it as being the foundation of the Trump family money. The final part of the line was constructed at two separate points.

While one team worked to lay the tracks from Carcross to Whitehorse, another crew worked from Bennett to Carcross. The following year on the 29th of July 1900, the final spike was driven into the ground at Carcross, marking the completion of the White Pass and Yukon route. The fact that Whitehorse was now linked by rail made towns like Bennett practically redundant. And as its population and visitor traffic dramatically decreased, businesses soon started to close. But one man had already predicted that Whitehorse would be the new boom town and made certain that he would not miss out. Frederick Trump realized that Bennett was being subverted as being a town to

make the money, he actually had his entire hotel put on barges and moved up the river to a brand new location where he can make more money for the miners in a different place. After the route was officially opened, they continued to make improvements to the railroad. New tunnels were dug out and bridges added along the line to make the journey more efficient. They even started to diversify and link the railroad with other forms of transport. As soon as the White Pass and Yukon Railroad reached Whitehorse along the Yukon River, the railroad company bought an entire fleet of stern-wheel steamboat. That allowed the White Pass and Yukon route, which was what that was,

the route using White Pass systems, to be able to connect the gold fields to the international marketplace. You can bring things in and out of the north. It was all created to supply the mining industry with an effect. infrastructure system. But by 1899, the gold rush was all but over, and was starting to be replaced by large-scale commercial mining. It was pretty much that system that kept the mines in the summertime working,

the people moving in and out of the Yukon that lived there. There were less and less and less of them, though. The mining interest during the 1930s almost completely shut down. It was, in fact, World War II that actually revitalized the White Pass Railroad. Being the closest point between the U.S. and Japan, Alaska became strategically important due to the threat of invasion. It was proposed that a highway be built to ensure the quick movement of communications,

and, if need be, troops. By chance, the White Pass and Yukon Railroad ran from Skagway right up to Whitehorse, in the middle of this. And if you could supply construction up the railroad, you could then build the Alaska Highway, both north and south, four construction heads instead of just two. You cut the time in half.

And suddenly the railroad was taken over, 3,000 troops land. The army takes over the docks, take over the town, takes over the railroad. They start running 34 trains a day on a railroad that back in the mid-30s was running one single train a month in the dead of winter. American engineers have conquered the untamed Canadian

wilderness. One thousand five hundred twenty miles of highway built through the Canadian North in nine months because primarily white pass and Yukon Railroad being right in the middle to be able to build north and south. After the war, the railroad was given another lifeline. A mining company put forward a plan to open one of the world's largest open pit lead zinc mines in the heart of the Yukon. named the mine Pharaoh. Pharaoh became the biggest mine in the history of the Yukon

territory. It was giant. He was world-class lead-zinc mine. The railway was kept in operation solely because of that single mine. You had all your eggs in one basket. At this particular point, that giant mine was worth 80% of the railroad's business. If anything went wrong in the commodities market, if the mine would shut down, the railroad, of course, would be immediately affected. And pretty much that's what happened. In 1982, the world metal market crashed, and Faro Mine was closed, sealing the fate of the White Pass and Yukon route. And in October, October the 8th, 1982, the railroad shut down.

Just as the gold rush, its prospectors, gangsters, and pioneers had become a distant memory, so to it seemed with the railroad that had brought them all together. But it was in fact for all those reasons that the railroad was able to survive. Its wild and untamed landscape, the natural beauty and all of the stories held in its incredible history, are what has sparked the imagination of thousands of tourists who now decide to travel here. And who could believe that thousands of people, even today, want to go to the middle of nowhere in order to take in the beauty. And thankfully, this amazing railway is still there

and still running to entertain us. Today, people are still taking that same voyage by boat to the harbor of Skagway and riding on those same tracks built by Mikini. More than a century ago, people flocked the area to try and get the gold. Now he'll flock to the area to go and see the railway. All in the hope of getting a small glimpse into the

journey taken by the prospectors of the Klondike Gold Rush. To me, the railway is still a glorious survivor of a different age. You know, it still runs today with different railway locomotives and stock, but still takes people through that incredible scenery. It is a route unlike any other. The secret of the railroad has been its luck, and then the hard work of the man and women who've stuck with it to pry to carry that luck through. and take advantage of it. That's the secret of the railroad.

Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below, and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, Check out Where Did Everyone Go?

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