The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&Y, WP&YR) is a Canadian and U.S. Class III narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other railroad. Equipment, freight and passengers are ferried by ship through the Port of Skagway, and via road through a few of the stops along its route.
The railroad began construction in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush as a means of reaching the gold fields. With its completion in 1900, it became the primary route to the interior of the Yukon, supplanting the Chilkoot Trail and other routes. The route continued operation until 1982, and in 1988 was partially revived as a heritage railway. In July 2018, the railway was purchased by Carnival Corporation & plc.
For many years the railroad was a subsidiary of Tri White Corporation, also the parent of Clublink, and operated by the Pacific and Arctic Railway and Navigation Company (in Alaska), the British Columbia Yukon Railway Company (in British Columbia) and the British Yukon Railway Company, originally known as the British Yukon Mining, Trading and Transportation Company (in Yukon), which used the trade name White Pass and Yukon Route. The railroad was sold by Clublink to a joint venture controlled by Survey Point Holdings, with a minority holding by the Carnival Corporation & plc parent company of the Carnival Cruise Line.The Globe: September 7, 2018: "TWC Enterprises Limited Announces Divestiture of White Pass Yukon Route to Joint Venture"
The railway was designated as an international historic civil engineering landmark by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1994.
History Construction
The line was born of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. The most popular route taken by prospectors to the gold fields in Dawson City was a treacherous route from the port in Skagway or Dyea, Alaska, across the mountains to the Canada–US border at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass or the White Pass. There, the prospectors were not allowed across by Canadian authorities unless they had sufficient gear for the winter, typically one ton of supplies. This usually required several trips across the passes. There was a need for better transportation than pack horses used over the White Pass or human portage over the Chilkoot Pass. This need generated numerous railroad schemes. In 1897, the Canadian government received 32 proposals for Yukon railroads, and most were never realized.
In 1897, three separate companies were organized to build a rail link from Skagway to Fort Selkirk, Yukon, away. Largely financed by British investors organized by Close Brothers merchant bank, a railroad was soon under construction. A gauge was chosen by the railway contract builder Michael James Heney. The narrow roadbed required by narrow gauge greatly reduced costs when the roadbed was blasted in solid rock. Even so, 450 tons of explosives were used to reach White Pass summit. The narrow gauge also permitted tighter radii to be used on curves, making the task easier by allowing the railroad to follow the landscape more, rather than having to be blasted through it.
Construction started in May 1898, but they encountered obstacles in dealing with the Skagway city government and the town's crime boss, Soapy Smith. The company president, Samuel H. Graves (1852–1911), was elected as chairman of the vigilante organization that was trying to expel Soapy and his gang of confidence men and rogues. On the evening of July 8, 1898, Soapy Smith was killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf with guards at one of the vigilante's meetings. Samuel Graves witnessed the shooting. The railroad helped block off the escape routes of the gang, aiding in their capture, and the remaining difficulties in Skagway subsided.
On July 21, 1898, an excursion train hauled passengers for out of Skagway, the first train to operate in Alaska. On July 30, 1898, the charter rights and concessions of the three companies were acquired by the White Pass & Yukon Railway Company Limited, a new company organized in London. Construction reached the summit of White Pass, away from Skagway, by mid-February 1899. The railway reached Bennett, British Columbia, on July 6, 1899. In the summer of 1899, construction started north from Carcross to Whitehorse, north of Skagway. The construction crews working from Bennett along a difficult lakeshore reached Carcross the next year, and the last spike was driven on July 29, 1900, with service starting on August 1, 1900. By then, much of the Gold Rush fever had died down.
At the time, the gold spike was actually a regular iron spike. A gold spike was on hand, but the gold was too soft and instead of being driven, was just hammered out of shape.
Early years
As the gold rush wound down, serious professional mining was taking its place; not so much for gold as for other metals such as copper, silver and lead. The closest port was Skagway, and the only route there was via the White Pass & Yukon Route's river boats and railroad.
While ores and concentrates formed the bulk of the traffic, the railroad also carried passenger traffic, and other freight. There was, for a long time, no easier way into the Yukon Territory, and no other way into or out of Skagway except by sea.
Financing and route was in place to extend the rails from Whitehorse to Carmacks, but there was chaos in the river transportation service, resulting in a bottleneck. The White Pass instead used the money to purchase most of the riverboats, providing a steady and reliable transportation system between Whitehorse and Dawson City.
While the WP&YR never built between Whitehorse and Fort Selkirk, some minor expansion of the railway occurred after 1900. In 1901, the Taku Tram, a portage railroad was built at Taku City, British Columbia, which was operated until 1951. It carried passengers and freight between the SS Tutshi operating on Tagish Lake and the MV Tarahne operating across Atlin Lake to Atlin, British Columbia (While Tutshi was destroyed by a suspicious fire around 1990, Tarahne was restored and hosts special dinners including murder mysteries. Lifeboats built for Tutshis restoration were donated to Tarahne.) The Taku Tram could not turn around, and simply backed up on its westbound run. The locomotive used, the Duchess, is now in Carcross.
In 1910, the WP&YR operated a branch line to Pueblo, a mining area near Whitehorse. This branch line was abandoned in 1918; a haul road follows that course today but is mostly barricaded; a Whitehorse Star editorial in the 1980s noted that this route would be an ideal alignment if the Alaska Highway should ever require a bypass reroute around Whitehorse.
By June 1914, the WP&YR had 11 locomotives, 15 passenger cars and 233 freight cars operating on of trackage; generating $68,368 in passenger revenue and $257,981 in freight revenue; still a profitable operation as operating expenses were only $100,347. While all other railroads in the Yukon (such as the Klondike Mines Railway at Dawson City) had been abandoned by 1914, the WP&YR continued to operate.
During the Great Depression, traffic was sparse on the WP&YR, and for a time trains operated as infrequently as once a week.
World War II
Alaska became strategically important for the United States during World War II; there was concern that the Japanese might invade it, as Alaska was the closest part of the United States to Japan. Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the decision was made by the US and Canadian governments to construct the Alaska Highway as an all-weather overland route to ensure communication. One of the principal staging points for construction was Whitehorse, which could be supplied by the WP&YR.
By that time the railroad was a financially-starved remnant from Klondike gold rush days, with well-worn engines and rolling stock. Despite this, the railroad moved during the first 9 months of 1942, more than double its prewar annual traffic. Even this was deemed insufficient, so the U.S. Government leased the railroad for the duration, effective at 12:01 a.m. on 1 October 1942, handing control to the United States Army. What became the 770th Railway Operating Battalion of the Military Railway Service took over train operations in company with the WP&Y's civilian staff. Major John E. Ausland, a former executive with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, was named superintendent, while Lieutenant Stanley Jerome Gaetz was trainmaster.
Canadian law forbade foreign government agencies from operating within Canada and its territories, but Japanese forces had occupied some of the Aleutian Islands by this time, and an accommodation was quickly reached to "make an illegal action legal."
The MRS scoured the US for usable narrow-gauge locomotives and rolling stock, and soon a strange and colorful assortment began arriving at Skagway. The single-largest group was seven D&RGW K-28 class 2-8-2's acquired prior to the lease, in August 1942, 2-8-0's from the Silverton Northern and the Colorado & Southern, all over 40 years old, and a pair of ET&WNC 4-6-0's soon appeared, among others, as well as eleven new War Department Class S118 2-8-2's. WP&Y's original roster of 10 locomotives and 83 cars was soon eclipsed by the Army's additional 26 engines and 258 cars.
The increase in traffic was remarkable: in the last 3 months of 1942, the railroad moved . In 1943, the line carried , equivalent to ten years' worth of typical prewar traffic: all this despite some of the most severe winter weather recorded since 1910; gales, snowdrifts and temperatures of succeeded in blockading the line from 5 to 15 February 1943 and from 27 January to 14 February 1944.
The peak movement occurred on August 4, 1943, when the White Pass moved 38 trains north and south, totaling (), and in 24 hours.
Control of the railroad was handed back to its civilian operators late in 1944.
1946–1982
In May, 1947, the railroad purchased its last steam locomotives. These were a pair of 2-8-2 Mikado type engines built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, numbered No. 72 and No. 73.
In 1951, the White Pass and Yukon Corporation Ltd., a new holding company, was incorporated to acquire the three railway companies comprising the WP&YR from the White Pass and Yukon Company, Ltd., which was in liquidation. The railway was financially restructured. While most other narrow-gauge systems in North America were closing around this time, the WP&YR remained open. In 1959, the first dividend to stockholders was paid: 10 cents per share.
The railroad began dieselizing in the mid to late 1950s: one of the few North American narrow-gauge railroads to do so. The railroad bought shovelnose diesels from General Electric, and later road-switchers from American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and Montreal Locomotive Works, as well as a few small switchers. On June 30, 1964, both Nos. 72 and 73 were retired from revenue service and replaced by diesels.
The railroad was an early pioneer of intermodal freight traffic, commonly called containerization; advertising of the time referred to it as the Container Route. The WP&YR owned an early container ship (Clifford J. Rogers, built in 1955), and in 1956 introduced containers, although these were far smaller than the truck-sized containers that came into use in the United States in 1956 and could not readily be handed off to other railroads or ship lines.