Skagway - The Gold Rush Cemetery

Day 03: July 16th, 2024

Weather: Rainy & Sunny, 17 degrees C

For breakfast, I tried my dehydrated apple cinnamon quinoa. It was alright. I definitely added too much water, but I'll eventually figure out the food situation. I have five weeks to get it right.

We spent about an hour this morning messing with the Trimble at camp and testing accuracy again. Because this is my life now, messing with the Trimble. It seemed...alright? It was a little suspicious that one of the 32 million Trimble apps was telling me I had .3m accuracy while the other told me I had 3.8m accuracy, but it's fine. I definitely wasn't getting .3 accuracy, but from the testing, it seemed sub-1 m at that moment. With that in mind, I decided to survey the Gold Rush Cemetery in Skagway today rather than the Slide Cemetery in Dyea. That way, I would have phone signal/data and could use the mapping apps online for my first go.

So, head on over to Skagway we did. It turns out the Gold Rush Cemetery is tucked behind the rail yard/tracks and is another one of the tourist bus stops. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised with the likes of Soapy Smith buried there. However, the presence of the cemetery is not well advertised. There is a bit of a walk to the cemetery from the parking lot; it has a signboard highlighting notable people who are buried there and a very questionable map. We spent more time fussing with the Trimble and getting it all set up. Ultimately, we looked like proper researchers, very official with our 6ft pole with a GPS receiver on top. 

We stopped at the graves of Martin Itjen and his wife and fussed a bit more there while the occasional tour group watched us. Martin Itjen was a well-known gentleman in these parts in the early 1900s, a businessman, and the premier tour operator for Skagway at the time; his legacy definitely lives on today.

It turns out this was also the location of a waterfall, so we OBVIOUSLY hiked up there and got a photo first. Then onward to the cemetery! This cemetery was exactly what I was expecting. Graves were scattered everywhere about a woodsy area, and there was no real rhyme or rhythm to their placement aside from the fact that they, for the most part, were facing W or some slight variation.

We got set up, and we felt good. Earl would hold the Trimble by the markers while I captured the GPS data on my phone and completed the grave survey. The survey is a list of features associated with the grave-  form, material, orientation, inscription, etc. - all things that tell you a lot about an individual and their treatment/place within society. I set up this form through Jotform, a web service I learned about at the Association for Gravestone Studies conference about a month back. Jotform allows you to use your forms to collect data even offline, syncing when you come back online. Then, when all the forms are filled out, you can export all the data from those forms into a lovely, handy spreadsheet. You can even set up your form to insert an image!

The caveat with Jotform, because there's always something, is that if you plan to fill out more than 100 forms a month, you need to subscribe. And they don't offer a monthly subscription; oh no, you need to subscribe for a year. So that was another hit to my wallet. 

So, we spent about half an hour on the first 5 graves/markers while getting into the swing of things. I make it sound all very casual, but I was ranting and raving about the Trimble the entire time. Then, at the grave of Lilan Theresa, as the Trimble tried to tell me her grave was in between two other graves that were two meters to my right, I said, "screw this," but with far more words and more eloquently, and we abandoned the Trimble. Goodbye, Trimble, you will not be missed.

We needed another plan of attack. We took the Trimble back to the truck, we mulled it over for a bit, and I looked at the crappy cemetery map. I decided that I could get what I needed by filling in the names on the crappy cemetery map. Was the distancing on the map accurate? No. But, at least I would know each individual's orientation, placement in the cemetery, and relation to one another, which was the critical part. So we got to work. I went grave by grave, taking the form data/individual photos, and I had Earl go around the cemetery to take various reference photos. Pictures with as many graves in them as possible while the markers are still legible so that I could accurately map their placement later. 

I would like to note once again that tour groups were running through this place approximately every 15 minutes, and it was placed in a reasonably challenging way on the terrain. If I had had a free run in the cemetery without people everywhere, we would have gotten out the tape reel and measured the boundaries of the cemetery and the more specific location of every marker there. But you have to be flexible and work with the conditions you're given.

We did this until I was about 1/2 done surveying, and then I started to get hungry. But not before we encountered a tour guide making sure all his tourists were back on the bus. Here is a lesson: if you're doing any kind of research, always ask everyone questions; it doesn't matter who they are. We asked the tour guide if there was a better map somewhere, and he directed us to the Skagway Museum, duh. At this point, it was 3:30, and the museum closes at 4, so we hustled on over, and lo and behold, they did indeed have a map. In truth, this map looked nearly the same as the other except that it was numbered and had a list of people on the side corresponding to each number. Then, the museum staff showed us a book they were selling, a book I had encountered in the SFU archives a year before, that contained a third map, which was very much the same but slightly different from the first two. So, in the end, I had three somewhat questionable maps to work with, huzzah.

It was getting a little late, and I still had half a cemetery to survey, so I chowed down on some trail mix on the way back to the cemetery, popped in my headphones, and grooved away while I finished my work. After that was done, I sat on a little bench just outside of the cemetery for about half an hour, documenting my overall impressions regarding upkeep, placement, treatment within local heritage/tourism, and things of that nature. 

Then Earl and I packed up and headed on the long road back to Dyea. On the menu that night was minestrone, I added just a little too much water again, but it was pretty good! After dinner, we just hung out silently, Earl harassing the squirrels and me prepping cards for tablet weaving. It feels like you have endless time in a place where the sun sets at midnight, and you often lose track of how late it is! Despite the many snags, today was a good day, and I'm looking forward to the Slide Cemetery tomorrow. I'll see you then!

-Nikki