A couple of winding miles north of Skagway, the Dyea flats mark the end of the channel. During the Gold Rush, this area went from a mud flat at the edge of the Chilkoot Pass to a city of 10,000, and then back to a wilderness again. Today, there are only fragments of what was a boom town the equal of Skagway.

Gold hunters had a choice to make when they reached the end of the waterway: the deep water harbor at Skagway allowed boats to dock and discharge passengers and goods directly into the booming city, where the White Pass route went off towards Bennett Lake, the first part of the overland trip to the gold fields. A little further up, the channel ended at Dyea, where a wide flood plain made for a miserable, muddy start. Small boats would take people off the bigger steamers and transport them as close to the shore as possible, depending on the tide... but then it was a slog to the dry ground and the start of the infamous Chilkoot Trail, the only other way to the gold fields.

The White Pass railroad as much as anything assured that Skagway would prevail in the end, and the equipment required to build it was only able to be offloaded in the harbor that Skagway provided. Today, the Dyea area has returned to thick, heavy forest, with bright green moss covering all the ground under the trees. A few determined people still live there, and the area is a favorite with tourists and adventure seekers in summer, looking to experience the Chilkoot Trail.

To stand on the flats and try to imagine what faced those people only a hundred or so years ago, a thousand miles from the civilization of Seattle, is an amazing thing. It's tough to walk ten feet through the forests here, much less the thirty miles over the mountains that was only the beginning of a long trip further north. Consider then that a person had to take a year's worth of supplies with him - on his back - and the task seems impossible. For some, according to the Park service, the 30 or so actual miles meant a thousand actually trekked, going up and coming back for more again and again and again. On the Golden Stairs over the pass, if a man stepped off the path in the winter of 1898, it could take four or more hours for a break in the human chain to get back on.

And life was short here in those days. In the Gold Rush cemetery just outside of Skagway, the average perceived age might be 30 or so, but it might be a lot younger if you do the math with all the babies and children who never even got started before ending up on this now forested hillside below a waterfall.

Now, don't believe any of this as gospel - I'm just a fascinated visitor here myself. But the history of this place, and the hardships involved for those who came here, is so worth reading it can't be overstated.