In the gold-rush years of 1897 and 1898, Skagway and its ghost-town twin city of Dyea were the logical places to get off the boat to head off on the trek to the gold fields near the new city of Dawson City, Yukon Territories. Skagway instantly grew from a single homestead to a population of between 15,000 and 25,000. This was a wide-open boomtown, a true Wild West outpost that in its biggest years was completely without law other than the survival of the meanest.

Skagway may be the best-preserved gold-rush town in the United States. In 1976 the National Park Service began the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic District. Broadway is a prosperous, freshly painted 6-block strip of gold-rush-era buildings. A few that look like real businesses turn out to be displays showing how it was back then.