Hiking Trails in Alaska - Chilkoot Trail (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Chilkoot Trail is a 33 mile (53 kilometre) trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, to Bennett, British Columbia. The trail, which uses the Chilkoot Pass, is a National Historic Site of Canada in British Columbia, and is part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in the United States. It was a major access route from the coast to Yukon goldfields in the late 1890s. The Chilkoot Trail and Dyea Site was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1978. In 1998, the centennial of the gold rush, Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site, in BC, joined the U.S. Park to form the Klondike Gold Rush International Historical Park. The Chilkoot Trail has three distinct periods of use: the indigenous Tlingit Indians who used the trail as a trading route up until the Klondike Gold Rush, the stampeders who used the trail during the gold rush, and the modern day historical park. The Chilkoot Trail is 33 mile (53 kilometer) trail through the Coast Mountains. Tlingit Indians used the trail as a vital trade route to trade for resources available in the interior. As pressures from American settlers and the Hudson's Bay Company weakened the Tlingit trading system, the Chilkoot Trail slowly became utilized by explorers and prospectors. Miners and prospectors ascend the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold RushThe event that pushed the Chilkoot Trail into a mainstream transportation route was the Klondike Gold Rush. The gold rush was primarily focused in the area around Dawson City in the Yukon Territory and on the Yukon River. There were several routes to get there, but as history proved, the Chilkoot Trail became far and away the most direct, most popular, and least expensive of all routes. The other primary route to the C... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=910733