Skagway Historic Town

After returning from our kayaking trip, we plowed around the historic district. We caught up accidentally with a local tour, kind of just tag along with the park ranger for a bit of history of its past resident such as “Soapy Smith”, king of the frontier con man. Interestingly, she explained the fake building façades you can see around the little town. This is to provide the town a general feeling of orderliness and symmetry — an architectural feature of the Victorian era which helped to give a sense of order to what was a chaotic period. And also the grander façade allows business owners to present themselves as more “established” than its true building/business worth. If you want to read more about the fake buildings, here is the link to the National Park Services website.

We picked up a few things along the way, couple ornaments for my Christmas tree (when I finally dig it out of the storage unit for a new home eventually….). We got some smoked salmon and that is about it. I skipped most of the stores full of the typical tourist catch.