SKAGWAY'S ROUGH 'N' ROWDY PAST A TOURIST DRAW : TOWN TOUR.

Byline: Arline Bleecker Orlando Sentinel

With barely a half-hour to get back to the dock before our ship departed, we coasted our rental car into Skagway at 40 mph. Too fast, apparently, for the town's speed limit and for one of Skagway's finest, who pulled us over just shy of the town line.

The policeman, typically phlegmatic in that frontier sort of way, had only this to say: ``Folks, you only gain 15 seconds going 40 instead of 25 ... and there ain't enough to do in this town worth speeding to.''

The quip was funny, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, Skagway is tiny - fewer than 700 year-round residents. Its small airport sits so close to its municipal baseball field that a sign at the edge of the diamond cautions drivers to ``Park At Your Own Risk.''

Despite its size, there is plenty to do here. Skagway, which will celebrate the gold rush centennial this summer, is on the itinerary of many ships. And because most ships slip into Skagway in early morning, passengers usually have plenty of time to explore.

Nestled in a valley at the end of the Lynn Canal on southeast Alaska's Inside Passage, Skagway was the jumping-off point a century ago for tens of thousands of gold rush stampeders on their way to the Klondike.

No doubt your ship will offer a number of shore excursions, many of which will let you explore the town's gold rush history. Passengers also can choose from such things as city tours, panning for gold, flight-seeing and railroad trips.

We toured the town in the morning, lunched at the infamous Red Onion Saloon and even found time for our car journey.

Just off the ship, we lucked into tour guide Steve Hites. Actually, Hites was hard to miss. Dressed like a cross between an undertaker and a cast member of ``The Addams Family,'' he was decked out in black, wearing a flowing greatcoat, a three-piece suit, a shirt with a high starched collar, high button shoes and bowler hat.

Ten of us filled Hites' butter-yellow bus, emblazoned with the name Skagway Street Car Co. Hites drove first to a promontory overlooking the town. Teetering near the edge, his greatcoat catching the wind, he comically pontificated: ``Skagway is an Indian name meaning terrible, windy, nasty, lousy place.''

Even on this midsummer morning, it was pretty brisk. But Hites was so enthusiastic doing his shtick that he worked up a sweat. ``Sorry folks: Can't tell you exactly just how much snow falls here in Skagway,'' he said, adding a villainous growl to the town's name. ``Because it falls (he paused for emphasis) sideways.''

North winds here routinely are clocked at 70 mph, and 8 feet of snow in as many days isn't unusual, he said.

Then we were off to the Old Gold Rush Cemetery. Here, amid toppled headstones, dead leaves and fallen gates, Hites re-created - sound effects and all - the famous shootout between hero Frank Reid and reprobate Soapy Smith, both buried here.

``It was a time when the town had no law, no order,'' Hites began. Smith tyrannically ruled with robbery and a murderous hand; Reid vowed to rid Skagway of the scoundrel. Feigning outrage at such a notion, Hites bellowed this chastising taunt to Smith: Your road to respectability is like a callgirl selling her body to get into a convent!'' His leather-gloved hands then mimicked the muffled clap-clap-clap of the crossfire in which both Reid and Smith died.

``And so began the start of good city government,'' Hites concluded, ``which meant that, now, robbers only fleeced transients.''

And there were plenty of them. The shortest route to the gold fields was through Skagway. In 1897, at the height of Gold Fever, 10,000 white canvas tents blanketed the town. From here, Klondikers would head to Dawson City on either the Chilkoot or White Pass trails.

Stampeders spent an average of three months on the Chilkoot, hauling everything on their backs. Klondikers on horseback went over White Pass, a path so dreadful that, according to author Jack London, ``3,000 pack horses were driven to death, their hearts turned to stone.''

Skagway's raucous saloons, bawdy bandits and the gold rush all are gone now, but its main street has been brought back to life by careful National Park Service restoration.

After downing a quick lunch at one restored landmark, the Red Onion Saloon, four of us decided to rent a car.

Finding Carcross

I remembered that the movie ``Never Cry Wolf'' was filmed not far from Skagway near Carcross, an even tinier town about 15 miles from the Canadian border. We decided to track it down.

In about an hour, we were over White Pass summit, fogged in at 3,900 feet. The landscape of scrub, lichen and black craggy rock had the desolate beauty of a moonscape and smelled of spruce. The environment here is so harsh that trees aren't much bigger than bonsai. I could only imagine what it must have been like for gold-rushers on this route.

Carcross is about 100 miles from Dawson City, where the first gold was discovered in Bonanza Creek. The isolated town also is where the last spike of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway was driven, too little too late, unfortunately, for most Klondikers.

A sign at the Caribou Hotel boasted: ``The Best Homemade Food In Town.'' Actually, it was the only food in town. The hotel's friendly proprietor offered us fresh bannock, a sconelike bread made with sugar and lard. While we enjoyed hot chocolate and tea, we asked what else there was nearby to see. She nonchalantly directed us to ``the world's smallest desert.'' Yeah, right, I thought. But it was true. About a quarter of a mile from Carcross was an honest-to-goodness desert.

To make sure it wasn't a mirage, we walked the windblown sands of the desert, which was a quarter of a mile wide and a mile long. But only briefly, because time was running out and we still had that drive back to Skagway.

Which is how that cop happened to get us.

We made it to the ship in the nick of time.

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Photo

Photo: The wood-frame buildings that once housed rowdy prospectors still stand tall in Skagway.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News