Abstract

The Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska has recently completed twenty years of building restoration, and associated Section 106 cultural research. Archaeological research has taken place at various business sites – a Gold Rush landing/storage site, a railroad depot, two saloons, a restaurant that was later razed to make way for a haberdashery, and a hotel later turned into an apartment complex. Work at residential sites included a missionary building built on top of a Gold Rush dump site, a Catholic priest's privy, the cabin and house site of one of the town founder's and his Tlingit wife, its post-Gold Rush occupation and remodeling by another Skagway pioneer family, and half a block of residences that during the Gold Rush and later periods were lived in by various of Skagway's pioneer families. Research themes have focused on the building of Skagway's infrastructure, acculturation, the role of tourism, the effect of Prohibition, and everyday life both before, during and after the hordes of Klondike stampeders step foot on Skagway's shores.