I booked Skagway’s Original Street Car tour through Norwegian. It was a $75 tour but I only had to pay $25 after Norwegian’s $50 discount.

The meeting spot was easy to find due to the signage. I recommend getting in line early so you can pick your seat on the car. 

This is the car. 

The guy who started this tour was Martin Itgen. He’s considered to be the father of tourism in Skagway. This is him with his original car.

Martin wrote a letter to the famous actress May West asking her out on a date. Instead of waiting for a reply he put his street car on ferry to Seattle and drove down to her studio in Hollywood. She went out with him. Their night out made the papers and brought more tourism to Skagway.

The White Pass steam engine is fired up. 

This is the Artic Brotherhood Hall. It was built from driftwood and served as a meeting hall for miners.

Why does the town look like this? It never burned. Every new building has to be based on one from the gold rush era.

Herman Kirmse came to Skagway during the gold rush. He brought cantaloupes with him. He sold all his cantaloupes to miners for $20 each. He used that money to build this store. What he said was “Don’t mine the mines, mine the miners.”

This was built to be a school house. It only lasted one semester because there weren’t any kids. Now it’s a museum and where they have their town hall meetings.

This is a Quonset hut. In WWII the military found the railroad to be a good way to move military equipment around so they came in here. They also redirected the river which is why there are no salmon and thus no wildlife here.

That is a Sitka Spruce.

We stopped for a photo op.

You are able to use the bathroom here.

We came back down the mountain and are crossing the river.

Our next stop is the Gold Rush Cemetery.

A lot of references around here are based around Frank Reid and Soapy Smith. Soapy Smith was a bad guy who cheated a bunch of people in Skagway. 

One night Soapy stumbled out of a bar drunk and disobeyed Reid when he told him to leave an area he was guarding. They shot each other. Soapy died immediately. Frank Reid was shot in his private area and died of an infection 12 days later.

Once people found out Jefferson Smith was Soapy Smith they redrew the line of the cemetery so he would be outside of it. They also put him behind bars.

Frank Reid is considered a hero around here. They took up a collection at his funeral to build this marker. It was later discovered that he had murdered someone in Oregon. He shot a guy in the back, said it was self defense, paid off the judge, and came up here.

Back there is a rock that Martin Itgen painted gold like a nugget. He wanted to show it to President Harding when he visited. The two graves by it are those of Martin Itgen and his wife.

That is where the streetcar drops you off if you want to stay downtown. Otherwise it will take y0u back to the ship area.

I enjoyed the tour and recommend it.  I had no clue about the history of the tour and the owner. I was really just expecting a drive around downtown but going out to the cemetery and up to the mountain viewpoint are extras that definitely make it worth going on the tour.