Alaska's Inside Passage Cruise

Located on the west coast of Canada is Vancouver, a city of just over 600,000. Comprised of various neighborhoods and areas such as Stanley Park, Chinatown, Gastown and Granville Island, Vancouver was a perfect choice for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Originally named Gastown after one of the lumber proprieters, Vancouver today is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Canada and a popular destination for cruise and rail travelers.

The Inside Passage is a coastal route for oceangoing vessels along a network of passages which weave through the islands on the Pacific coast of North America. Extending from southeastern Alaska, in the United States, through western British Columbia, and to northwestern Washington state, ships using the route can avoid some of the bad weather in the open ocean and may visit some of the many isolated communities along the route.

As the third largest city in Alaska with a population of around 30,000, Juneau was the first town founded after Alaska’s purchase from the Russians. The town was founded on gold nuggest and in 1880, Sitka mining engineer George Pilz offered a reward to any local Tlingit chief who could lead him to gold-bearing ore. Chief Kowee of the Auk Tlingit tribe arrived with such ore, and Pilz sent Joe Juneau and Dick Harris, two vagabond prospectors, to investigate, and the town formed around the original mining camp.

Lying at the head of Lynn Canal is Skagway, one of the driest places in an otherwise soggy southeast. While Petersburg averages over 100” of rain in a year and Ketchikan a drenching 154”, Skagway gets only 26” annually. At the height of the gold rush, Michael J. Heney, an Irish contractor, convinced a group of English investors that he could build a railroad over the White Pass Trail to Whitehorse. The construction of the White Pass & Yukon Route was nothing short of a superhuman feat, and the railroad became the focal point of the town’s economy after the gold rush and during the military buildup of WWII.

Located just west of Juneau is the national park known as Glacier Bay. A UNESCO World Heritage site, this park features some of the world’s most spectacular tidewater glaciers, which regularly calve into the sea. Calving is the process of ice breaking from the face of a glacier and forming ice bergs.

Ketchikan is known for its totem poles. These can be viewed at Totem Bight or Saxman Village. They tell stories of the Native people. It is said that the Tlingits were inspired to carve totem poles after finding a carved log washed up on the beach.