Chilkoot Trail

The Chilkoot Trail is a 33-mile (53 km) trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, in the United States] to Bennett, British Columbia, in Canada. It was a major access route from the coast to Yukon goldfields in the late 1890s. The trail became obsolete in 1899 when a railway was built from Dyea's neighbor port Skagway along the parallel White Pass trail.

The U.S. portion of the Chilkoot Trail and Dyea Site were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, following creation of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in 1976. In 1987, the B.C. portion of the trail was designated Chilkoot Trail National Historic Site. In 1998, the centennial of the gold rush, the National Historic Site in British Columbia joined with the U.S. National Historical Park to form Klondike Gold Rush International Historical Park. In 2022, the 16.5 mi (26.6 km) portion of the trail in Alaska was designated Chilkoot National Historic Trail, part of the National Trails System.

Tlingit Indigenous people 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 traditional Tlingit trading system, the Chilkoot Trail slowly became utilized by explorers and prospectors.

The name Chilkoot Trail is a partial translation of the trail's Tlingit name, namely Chilkoot Dei•yi, which means Chilkoot-owned Trail. The trail's English name omits the reference to ownership. In addition, the second word of Chilkoot Dei•yi sounds like the name for the village of Dyea. Prior publications state that Dyea was derived from "to pack" [yaa] or "carrying place" [yaa yé]. However, the presence of the initial \d\ sound in Dyea casts doubt on those latter possibilities, and suggests that the first syllable had been dei (as in dei-yi).

The Klondike Gold Rush (1896–1899) transformed the Chilkoot Trail into a mainstream transportation route to Canada's interior. The gold rush was primarily focused in the region around Dawson City in Yukon and the Yukon River. Of the several overland routes, the Chilkoot Trail was the most direct, least expensive, and, soon enough, most popular.

The other primary route to the headwaters of the Yukon River, however, was also based out of Skagway: the rival White Pass route. The White Pass route was slightly longer but less rigorous and steep, whereas the Chilkoot was shorter and more difficult. Skagway, because of its deepwater harbor, served as the principal port for both routes (nearby Dyea, the beginning of the Chilkoot Trail, was built on the extensive, shallow Taiya River delta).

Prospectors who chose the Chilkoot were ferried to Dyea by small boat or ferry. Soon, both Skagway and Dyea were bustling tent cities as sensationalist headlines of the gold rush spurred men from across the United States to leave their jobs and families and gain passage up the Inside Passage to Skagway.

As it became apparent that many of the prospectors who chose the Chilkoot simply were not going to survive the arduous terrain and harsh weather, Canada's North-West Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) declared that prospectors could only enter Canada if they had at least one ton of gear, enough to supply a prospector for one year (the Klondike supply list).