Photo: Luigi Zanasi (CC BY-SA 2.0 ca)
A self-guided audio tour that begins at the Gold Rush Cemetery, a short way north of downtown Skagway, and continues by car to Dyea, with each place seen on foot. The cemetery was Skagway's first, its burials beginning in early 1898, and it holds the graves of Jefferson 'Soapy' Smith, buried just outside the original cemetery, and Frank Reid, the city engineer who faced him on the Juneau wharf on July 8, 1898 and died of his wound less than two weeks later. Before the gold rush Dyea was a Tlingit village, a seasonal fishing camp and trading place. The National Park Service loop passes the ruin of the Vining and Wilkes warehouse, built to hold the stampeders' 'ton of goods', the false front of A. M. Gregg's real-estate office, the only standing structure left in Dyea, and the flats where stampeders and their goods were landed. The tour ends at the Slide Cemetery, set up by the Army after a snow slide buried part of the Chilkoot Trail on April 3, 1898, and at the trailhead on the Taiya River, where the 33-mile trail to Lake Bennett begins.
9 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 5 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 1 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Gold Rush Cemetery, Soapy Smith's Grave, Frank Reid's Grave.
Dyea Townsite, Vining and Wilkes Warehouse Ruin, Main Street and the A. M. Gregg False Front, Dyea Flats and the Wharves.
Slide Cemetery, Chilkoot Trailhead.
The con man and kingpin of stampede Skagway, buried just outside the original cemetery because the townspeople did not want him among the others.
The city engineer who faced Soapy Smith on the Juneau wharf, under the largest monument in the cemetery.
The start of the National Park Service walking loop, at a place that was a Tlingit village, fishing camp and trading place before the gold rush.
The weathered wooden false front of A. M. Gregg's real-estate office, the only standing structure left in Dyea.
The cemetery the Army set up at Dyea for the dead of the snow slide on the Chilkoot Trail on April 3, 1898.
The start of the 33-mile Chilkoot Trail to Lake Bennett, a corridor the Tlingit closely guarded as a trade route before the 1880s.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 9 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 9 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Skagway's Gold Rush Cemetery, Dyea and the Chilkoot Trailhead, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
9 narration points, including Chilkoot Trailhead, Gold Rush Cemetery, Soapy Smith's Grave, Frank Reid's Grave and Dyea Townsite. That is about 10 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2 hours, plus the drive to Dyea total, but you walk at your own pace. 9 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.