Klondike Highway
highway in Skagway, Alaska, United States and Yukon Territory, Canada
The Klondike Highway is a highway that runs from the Alaska Panhandle through the province of British Columbia and the territory of Yukon in Canada, linking the coastal town of Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon. Its route somewhat parallels the route used by prospectors in the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush.
In both British Columbia and Yukon, the 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 Yukon–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 begins in Skagway, Alaska. It travels in the state of Alaska for 24 km (15 miles), up through the White Pass in the Coast Mountains where it crosses the Canada–US border to British Columbia (BC). It remains in the province 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 709 km (441 miles) long.
The public source identifies “Klondike Highway” as highway in Skagway, Alaska, United States and Yukon Territory, Canada. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Klondike, Highway and highway.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Klondike Highway”, the useful work is to connect “highway in Skagway, Alaska, United States and Yukon Territory, Canada” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q802262. Authority coordinates are 59.545, -135.208. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898 and 1978.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Klondike Highway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.