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Original sepia-tone silver photograph. Captioned and with imprint in negative. 11.5x19 cm (4½x7½"), on original mount with photographers' imprint embossed in lower margin, on the back is printed pictorial advertisement for the photographers

Rare and early photographic view of Skagway, Alaska, showing a settlement of tents on the shore, a crowd of the first miners huddled on shore, boats on the bay. On July 29, 1897, the steamer Queen docked at Moore's wharf with the first boat load of prospectors. More ships brought thousands of hopeful miners into the new town, and prepared for the 500-mile journey to the gold fields in Canada. Skagway and Dyea, Alaska, located 600 miles south of the gold fields, were the closest salt water ports to the Klondike. They became "boom towns" that catered to miners. The most popular routes to the Klondike began here: from Skagway, stampeders took the White Pass and from Dyea they took the Chilkoot Pass. By October 1897, according to a Northwest Mounted Police Report, Skagway "had grown from a concourse of tents to a fair-sized town with well-laid-out streets." There is only one copy of the photograph that we could find a listing for, at the Edith Feero Larson Collection at University of Washington Library.