Construction

Section with a switchback

First train headed to White Pass, 1899

Construction of the one tunnel in the line, 1899

Rock cut section near White Pass ca. 1899

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, 325 miles (523 km) away. Largely financed by British investors organized by Close Brothers merchant bank, a railroad was soon under construction. A 3 ft (914 mm) 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 4 miles (6.4 km) 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 2,885-foot (879 m) summit of White Pass, 20 miles (32 km) 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, 110 miles (177 km) 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

White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad Building is now a museum and home of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park

White Pass & Yukon Route 1907 Ad

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 2+1⁄2-mile (4 km) 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^[30] 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 Tutshi's 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 110 miles (180 km) 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.^[31] 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

Looking south from the tunnel

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 67,496 short tons (61,231 t) 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.^[32]

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 25,756 short tons (23,365 t). In 1943, the line carried 281,962 short tons (255,792 t), 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 −30 °F (−34 °C) 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 3,346 gross short tons (3,035 t) (2,085 net short tons [1,891 t]), and 2,236 locomotive-miles (3,598 km) in 24 hours.^[33]

Control of the railroad was handed back to its civilian operators late in 1944.^[34]

1946–1982

One of the present-day White Pass diesel locomotives is shown here at Skagway, Alaska

White Pass and Yukon Route No 93

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.^[35]

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, the line retired its last steam locomotive.

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.

The Faro lead-zinc mine opened in 1969. The railway was upgraded with seven new 1,200 hp (890 kW) locomotives from ALCO, new freight cars, ore buckets, a straddle carrier at Whitehorse to transfer from the railway's new fleet of trucks, a new ore dock at Skagway, and assorted work on the rail line to improve alignment. In the fall of 1969, a new tunnel and bridge that bypassed Dead Horse Gulch were built to replace the tall steel cantilever bridge that could not carry the heavier trains. This enormous investment made the company dependent on continued ore traffic to earn the revenue, and left the railway vulnerable to loss of that ore-carrying business.^[36]

As well, passenger traffic on the WP&YR was increasing as cruise ships started to visit Alaska's Inside Passage. There was no road from Skagway to Whitehorse until 1978. Even after the road was built, the White Pass still survived on the ore traffic from the mines.

During this time, the green-yellow engine color scheme, with a thunderbird on the front, was replaced with blue, patterned with black and white. (The green-yellow scheme was restored in the early 1990s, along with the thunderbird. As of 2005, however, one engine still had the blue color scheme. The steam engines, however, remained basic black.)

In 1982, metal prices plunged, striking with devastating effect on the mines that were the White Pass and Yukon Route's main customers. Many, including the Faro lead-zinc mine, closed down, and, with that traffic gone, the White Pass was doomed as a commercial railroad. Hopeful of a reopening, the railway ran at a significant loss for several months, carrying only passengers. However, the railway closed down on October 7, 1982.^[37]

Some of the road's ALCO diesels were sold to a railroad in Colombia, and three (out of four, and one of these was wrecked) of the newer ALCO diesels built by and in storage with ALCO's Canadian licensee MLW (Montreal Locomotive Works) were sold to US Gypsum in Plaster City, California. Only one of these modern narrow-gauge diesels, the last narrow-gauge diesel locomotives built for a North American customer, was delivered to the White Pass. The five diesels sold to Colombia were not used there as they were too heavy, and were re-acquired in 1999; one was nearly lost at sea during a storm as it broke loose on the barge and slowly rolled towards the edge.

The railway was the focus of the first episode of the BBC Television series Great Little Railways in 1983.

War Department Baldwin 2-8-2 Locomotives

There are two persistent myths that show up in almost every book or article which mentions the role of the White Pass & Yukon Route in the building of the Alaska Highway during the Second World War. The myths concern the eleven new USATC S118 Class locomotives that the United States Army Transportation Corps brought to the WP&YR in 1943. Myth No. 1 is that they were converted from 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge gauge to 3 ft (914 mm) gauge by the WP&YR shops in Skagway, Alaska. Myth No. 2 is that they were built for Iran and diverted to the WP&YR.^[49]

These locomotives, designated USA 190 to USA 200, were constructed by Baldwin Locomotive Works as 3 ft (914 mm) gauge and shipped fully assembled. No modification was needed. The MacArthur was designed by the American Locomotive Company for 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge and the smaller gauges were accommodated with various widths spacers (rings) between the wheels and the truck side frames on same length axles. The spacers were 3 in (76.2 mm) wide in the case of 3 ft (914 mm) gauge and 33.5 mm (1.32 in) wide in the case of 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in). In total, nearly 800 MacArthurs were produced by ALCO, Baldwin, and a few other manufacturers.

The reason USA 190–200 were never destined for "Iran" as is often mistakenly stated in books relating WP&YR history, is that Iran's government railway was, and is, 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in). Also, because of scarce water and extensive tunnels, Iran was the first case where the Army primarily used diesel locomotives. USATC narrow-gauge locomotives were never destined for Iran.

The first locomotives of the MacArthur design that Baldwin Locomotive Works built were USA 190–200 for the WP&YR, which makes them unique. This initial 1942 sales order to Baldwin for 60 MacArthur 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) gauge locomotives was for India's extensive meter-gauge railway system. The first eleven were diverted to the WP&YR as 3 ft (914 mm) gauge, the next 15 went to India as meter gauge, another 20 went to Queensland Rail as 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge, and the remaining 14 were meter gauge for India where the order was destined before the Alaskan and Australian diversions.^[50][51][52]