White Pass & Yukon Route Railway

White Pass and Yukon Route Railway. . , The story of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway really begins in April of 1898, with a chance meeting in a Skagway saloon. A group of British financiers named the Close Brothers had acquired the charters that would allow them to build a railway from Skagway, at tidewater, into the Yukon Territory. , The Yukon was mostly unexplored wilderness at that time, but news of gold in the Klondike was starting to reach the outside world. Getting to the gold was difficult and time-consuming because of the distance and terrain. There was a desperate need for a proper transportation network and the Close Brothers' project was just one of many railway schemes which had been proposed. Three representatives of the company had come to Skagway in April of 1898 to survey the route and decide if the plan was feasible. After seeing the rocky cliffs and sheer rock walls that the rail line would have to cross, the three men were ready to abandon the plan entirely., By chance, they happened to meet up with Michael J. Heney, an independent railway contractor who, like them, was in Skagway to assess the possibility of building a railway., Heney had also surveyed the route and was convinced that a railway was possible, but he lacked capital. He managed to convince the others and an alliance was formed., Construction began May 28th on the 110-mile narrow gauge line; construction would eventually take 3500 men more than 26 months to complete. To add to the difficulties, Skagway was 1000 miles from the nearest supply point., In addition, the terrain through the White Pass was brutal and weather conditions were worse. Work went ahead though, and after nine months of back-breaking work, the track reached the summit. From there it was all, quite literally, downhill. Work continued to Bennett Lake, which was reached in July 1899, more than a year after work first began., The rock crews stayed at Bennett to blast out the roadbed along the lake while the rest of the men went north to the section of rail from Carcross to Whitehorse. A work camp was established here at Carcross during the construction. When the Carcross-Whitehorse section of track was complete, work continued on the Bennett Lake-Carcross stretch. The track finally reached Carcross at 5:00 p.m. on July 29th, 1900 and the last spike was driven in front of a huge crowd onlookers., Left: W.P. and Y.R. train in Carcross, 1945, Bennett Collection , Above: Driving the last spike, July 19, 1900, H.C. Barley, photographer and collection , Both are courtesy Yukon Archives.