Klondike Highway

The Klondike Highway is a highway that links the Alaskan coastal town of Skagway to Yukon's Dawson City. Its route somewhat parallels the route used by prospectors in the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush.

In Yukon, the Klondike Highway is marked as Yukon Highway 2. In Alaska, the Highway is marked as Alaska Route 98 (as in "route of 1898"). Until 1978, the unopened section between the BC border and Carcross had no official highway number, while the section north of Carcross to the Alaska Highway was Highway 5, and the section from Stewart Crossing to Dawson was Highway 3. The BC section is now maintained by the Yukon government as a natural extension of Highway 2.

Route description

The Klondike Highway winds in the state of Alaska for 24 km (15 miles), up through the White Pass in the Coast Mountains where it crosses the Canadian border to British Columbia (BC) for 56 km (35 miles), then enters Yukon where it reaches the Alaska Highway near Whitehorse and shares a short section with that highway until north of Whitehorse, where it diverges once more to Dawson City. The highway is 712 km (442 miles) long.