Visiting the Old Homestead in Skagway Virtually!

We live in an extraordinary age when it comes to what the Internet enables us to do. In exploring my father's family's time in Skagway, I was never able to get the location of his childhood home. It seemed like a reasonable task. Skagway is located in a valley, unable to grow any larger than when he lived there and it's relatively small with a grid-like layout. And thanks to Google Maps street view function, I could actually virtually walk down each street without having to pay for an expensive ticket to this remote town in Alaska. However, his memory was too fuzzy to remember the address of the place he called home until his family moved to Anchorage. The biggest hint that he and his sister could give me was that it was across the street from the now-gone White Pass and Yukon Hospital. So, with that little bit of information, I first went to the Skagway News for information. They couldn't help. Then, on a hunch, I emailed the Skagway Museum and to my surprise, within a few days they emailed me back with the exact location and a detailed description of the house so that I could find it online! (Sidenote: did you know that most residents in Skagway don't have address numbers?! My mind is blown!)

Quickly I opened up the laptop (Why doesn't street view work on iPads, by the way?) and using their information I was quickly able to find the home of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. It was amazing that the house was still there and as my father and aunt described it. It was great to see a house that I probably will never be able to visit in person as it far too remote and too expensive a journey. It was also a lot of fun to print out the screenshots and send them to my father and hear his reaction to them. Unfortunately, I was unable to see the porch from the street view because of the tree. Otherwise, I would have been able to check for the location of the adorable picture (below) of my dad and aunt when they were little. (By the way, if you happen to be in Skagway and figure out where this house is, leave the owner alone. I don't know who this private citizen so respect their privacy.)

My father and aunt on the porch in Skagway (1940s).

My father's childhood home in present-day Skagway (2019?).