Skagway Museums – Part 1

The Skagway Museum

The Skagway Museum is full of stuff that will make you say, “Wow. How about that?”

Museums are pretty cool. They’re full of stuff that tells a story. Maybe it’s a story about a certain group of people, their culture, or the world around them. Museums are often full of artifacts from days long gone. They are a reminder that life wasn’t always as it is today. A lot of the stuff in museums is trash people threw away and later found or stuff that was stolen out of old graves. Even the dead bodies! Keep in mind that if you want to open a museum, you can’t just start digging up graves at your local cemetery. It’s called desecrating a grave, and it’s very illegal. However, if the grave is really old and part of another culture, you can take whatever you want and stick it in your museum. That’s called anthropology and can win you a Pulitzer Prize!

Legally desecrating old graves also requires this silly hat.

Tourists visiting Skagway often walk into the tour booth and ask, “Where is the Skagway Museum?” Well, brother, I have news for you. Skagway has a heaping helping of museums to choose from. In this exciting new Sunday blog series, we are going to review every museum in Skagway. What a great idea!

The Skagway Museum – Local History and Modern Flair

The Skagway Museum is run by the municipality and is located at City Hall on 7th Avenue and Spring Street. There are some great exhibits in the Skagway Museum focusing on the town’s history from olden days to modern times.

Walking through the Skagway Museum is like taking a stroll through time. Unless you start in the middle and jump around, which would make it more like random time travel. If you start at the end, it’s like going back in time.

One thing’s for sure, throughout history people living in Skagway liked to throw random things into the woods. This turned out to be a good thing because now their unwanted garbage is in the Skagway Museum!

The days before Europeans settled Skagway

While indigenous people never settled in Skagway, it did get its name from the Tlingits who lived nearby. That name was shԍagéi, and it refers to the strong winds that frequently blow in the Upper Lynn Canal. In fact, shԍagéi is a woman’s nickname likely referring to the profile of a face that seems to appear in profile on a local mountain named Parson’s Peak. Locals call it “Face Mountain.”

But why am I telling you this? You can just go to the Skagway Museum and learn about it on your own. There are also some cool displays of indigenous sleds, pottery, and other stuff.

Great displays make the Skagway Museum more than just any other Skagway Museum.

From the first European Settlers to World War II?

Once European settlers came to Skagway, it was all over. This was the Golden Age of throwing stuff away in the woods. There was a Gold Rush, a train was built, then things got quiet for a while. During WWII, the military was stationed in Skagway while building the ALCAN, and then a lot more stuff got thrown out in the woods. The museum is full of that stuff and it is very interesting.

From the end of the war to the modern day

After WWII, Skagway was a quiet place. Things got weird for a while in the 70s and then the railroad shut down in the 80s. Future prospects were bleak, but then cruise ship companies noticed that there was a cool scenic train and suddenly Skagway had an economy again. You’re part of that history and you can learn more about it the Skagway Museum.

Don’t miss the Skagway Museum

Out of all the museums in Skagway, the Skagway Museum is the most Skagwegian. You don’t want to miss it. It costs $2 to get in, which makes it the cheapest thing in Skagway other than a train charm at the jewelry store.

Remember, if you’re hiking around Skagway and find some old garbage, be sure to bring it by the Skagway Museum and see if it’s an artifact or just stupid garbage. Also, please leave all the local graves alone. It won’t be legal to dig them up for another hundred years or so. Thank you. Be sure to check in next Sunday for another review of a Skagway museum.

Skagway Museum Review – 100 relics!