(with apologies to The Temptations)
Skagway buildings are neon bright on Broadway
You can scent the history in the air
And when you're walking down the street
Everywhere you look's a treat
Gold dust seems to glitter everywhere.
(on Broadway)
Some frown and call it 'tourist trap,' that Broadway
But I can't help but like those rainbow hues
Glad we got to spend some time
Wand'ring round in the 'liquid sunshine'
After all we had nothing to lose (on Broadway)
Golden dome, you dominate old Broadway
Give a flavor of days long past, I do say.
In Skagway's sky you are a star
Draw the pilgrims from afar
Celebrity, I know you are on Broadway
One of the most famous buildings on Skagway's Broadway is the Golden North Hotel. Its bright dome gleams with the promise of all those Stampeders. It wasn't always a hotel, it started out as the Klondike Trading Company ... but like so much of adaptable, changeable Skagway, got a face lift with a move. Hey, when you're in the frontier, you reuse everything you can!
Some say it's haunted -- there's a glowing orb in Room 14, and a young woman of tragic history, Mary, in room 23. Well, a place like Skagway would be remiss if it weren't packed with ghosts. We certainly felt the eddies of history as we wandered the boardwalked streets of this Alaskan Broadway.
WHY IT'S LISTED =======
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NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK NOMINATION
NFS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018
… CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES: I. BUILDINGS: A total of 167 buildings are listed. The numbers on the descriptive list are illustrated on Map B (2 sheets), entitled "Skagway and White Pass Historic District."
Dozens of buildings from when Skagway was the "Metropolis" of Alaska are still standing. Among these are McCabe College (now city hall), Moore Office Building, St. James Hotel, Mascot Saloon, Seattle Hotel, Golden North Hotel, and the Arctic Brotherhood Hall.
315. Golden North Hotel, 1898. Three-story frame commercial building with flat roof, cornice line between the second and third floors, and simple bracketing that projects from above the third floor. Double beveled shiplap, plywood, lattice and vertical post siding. A three-quarter round turret projects from above the first floor, above which is an octagonal, wood-shingled, onion-shaped dome. Moved to site and added to in 1908; recent shed roof addition in rear.
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National Park Service: KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH SKAGWAY, DISTRICT OF ALASKA —1884-1912: Building the Gateway to the Klondike Historical and Preservation Data
1908 February Klondike Trading Co. building moved to Broadway; opened as Golden North Hotel. (
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… PHASE IV
Skagway, A Tourist Town, 1905 to the present
The fourth phase of building activity was influenced by tourism as well as by a brief economic spurt in 1908. A local drive to improve the town's appearance was part of a reaction to criticism about Skagway's being the "scrap heap of creation," as one visitor phrased it.
Local groups organized to clean up the town, and civic improvements at first meant tearing down early gold rush era shacks. By 1907, however, businessmen were suggesting the creation of a New Skagway by building a business corridor along Broadway Avenue. They actually used little new construction; instead people merely moved structures from other parts of town onto Broadway. The Golden North Hotel was moved and a third floor added. The Trail Inn/Pack Train bar complex had been two army barracks which were moved to Broadway and adorned with an exuberant three-story facade, 100 feet long, with a corner tower. The avenue's new appearance was due to new architectural styles; in fact, the facades built in 1908 could have been built in 1900 or earlier. However, the overall townscape had changed. The major businesses that once lined Fourth, Fifth and Sixth avenues, were now shifted 90 degrees to face the railroad tracks down Broadway.
…In 1907 the editor of the Daily Alaskan echoed soon-to-be mayor Chris Shea's call for a New Skagway. He wanted to clear up the alleys, to tear down the old ramshackle shacks, and to gather the town's scattered business houses along Broadway. Skagway's citizens took action. They moved huge two- and three-story buildings halfway across town. New buildings went up. By the end of 1909, a row of ornate hotels, shops, offices, saloons, and stores lined Broadway. The Trail Inn/Pack Train bar, the Golden North Hotel, the Dewey Hotel, the Lynch & Kennedy Haberdashery, and the Harrison's Store opened. Unfortunately, the economic base for these improvements proved short-lived. A national financial panic that shook the West in 1907-1909 had repercussions in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. The low-grade Conrad silver-lead mines closed; and the Whitehorse copper mines produced only intermittently, leaving the White Pass and Yukon Route's new ten-mile railroad spur and its Skagway ore bins only partially used. By 1909 the Klondike had passed its peak productive years and was on its long steady decline. By 1913 the old White Pass & Yukon Route had paid its last dividend. (
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GOLDEN NORTH HOTEL 34 F 1898 (
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The Klondike Trading Company built the two-story, wood, business block with an onion-domed corner tower at Third Avenue and State early in 1898. After the Klondike stampede, the building was rented by the army as barracks until 1904. George Dedman and Edward Foreman, proprietors of the Golden North Hotel, purchased the Klondike Trading Company building and in 1908 had it moved one block to the southwest corner of Third and Broadway. They added a third floor, raised the corner dome another story, and refitted the structure as a hotel, Skagway's largest. The Golden North Hotel continues in business; the descendents of George Dedman operate Dedman's Photo Shop in Skagway.
And because I want to bring some new links into this exercise:
Golden North Hotel (
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Built in 1898, the oldest operating hotel in Alaska was a two story hotel, moved in 1908 by horse and capsten to its present location. A third story and the world famous golden dome was also added at this time.
Corrington's purchased the property in 1997 and spent more than one million dollars renovating the Crown Jewel of the Gold Rush. Now solid and up to code, each of the 31 rooms are dedicated to gold rush families and filled with their momentos and antiques.
The first floor offers a 60 seat pub, 80 seat Victorian style restaurant, 30 seat outdoor patio and Southeast Alaska’s first microbrewery.
Golden North Hotel Skagway Alaska (
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The Golden North Hotel Skagway Alaska was built in 1898. It is the oldest operating hotel in Alaska. When it was first built, it was a two-story hotel. Then, it was moved in 1908 by horse and capstan to its present location. At this time, a third story and the world famous golden dome were added.
Corrington"s purchased this Skagway Alaska lodging venue in 1997. The company spent more than one million dollars renovating the Crown Jewel of the Gold Rush. Now, each of the 31 rooms at the Golden North Hotel Skagway is dedicated to gold rush families. They are filled with their mementos and antiques.
The first floor of the hotel is home to a 60-seat pub, an 80-seat Victorian style restaurant, a 30 seat outdoor patio and Southeast Alaska"s first microbrewery.
Golden North Hotel Ghost Story (
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Two ghosts haunt this old hotel. Employees of the hotel have named one of them "Mary." They believe she is the spirit of a young lady who died of pneumonia in her room, while waiting for her fiancé to return from a gold-prospecting expedition. She still haunts Room 23, where ghostly images of a woman have appeared and guests have complained of choking sensations in the middle of the night. Room 14 is haunted by a strange "light form" that moves around in the room at night. Nobody knows who, or what, it represents.
Golden North Hotel , Skagway Alaska. *spookygal* (
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The Golden North Hotel in Skagway Alaska, claims their hotel is haunted by two ghosts. The first is a strange light form that haunts room fourteen . The light is said to move around the room and no one seems to know why or what it is.
This weird effect is not the only thing that has scared or alarmed guests.Some time ago, a young lady who was staying at the hotel in room twenty-three became very ill with pneumonia during her stay. So her fiancé went off to work in a gold digging expedition hoping to make enough money to take his sick love to a hospital. She waited anxiously for her fiancé to return, but the longer she waited the more ill she became. Eventually she gave up hope that her love would return .
It was too late by the time he came home, she had died. Their love story came to a tragic end. Now, the hotel says that guests who have stayed in room twenty-three claim to have seen a ghostly figure of a woman reaching out to choke them or felt someone choking them in the middle of the night.
"author unknown"