The Dalton Trail is a

trail A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or small road usually passing through a natural area. In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a path or footpath is the preferred term for a pedestrian or hiking trail. ...

that runs between Pyramid Harbor, west of Haines, Alaska in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, and

Fort Selkirk Fort Selkirk is a former trading post on the Yukon River at the confluence of the Pelly River in Canada's Yukon. For many years it was home to the Selkirk First Nation (Northern Tutchone). History Archaeological evidence shows that the site h ...

, in the

Yukon Territory Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

, using the Chilkat Pass. It is 396 km (246 mi) long. Originally, the Chilkat group of

Tlingit The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

controlled the trail, which they used for trade with the

Athabascan Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific ...

people of the interior. They called the trail "

grease trail A grease trail is an overland trade route, part of a network of trails connecting the Pacific coast with the Interior in the Pacific Northwest. History Trails were developed for trade between indigenous people, particularly the trade in eulach ...

" after the

eulachon The eulacheon ( (''Thaleichthys pacificus''), also spelled oolichan , ooligan , hooligan ), also called the candlefish, is a small anadromous species of smelt that spawns in some of the major river systems along the Pacific coast of North Amer ...

oil (extracted from the tiny candlefish) that was the most important item of trade on the Chilkoot side. Each Tlingit chief had an exclusive Athabascan trading partner. Tlingits took eulachon oil and returned with furs, hides and copper nuggets gathered by the Athabascans. Trading parties often lasted a month or more and often consisted of as many as 100 men, each of whom would carry a 45 kg (100 pound) load. Upon the arrival of Europeans, the Chilkat acted as middlemen between the traders and Athabascans and became quite wealthy. The Chilkat trade monopoly was broken in 1890 when E. J. Glave, John (Jack) Dalton and several others were hired by ''Leslie's Illustrated Magazine'' of New York to explore the interior of Alaska. While exploring the Grease Trail, they saw the possibility of a trade route there. Dalton and Glave returned in the spring of 1891 to try taking pack horses on the trail. Glave died a few years later, but Dalton remained in the area. He developed a series of trading posts and, in 1899, began charging a toll to use the Grease Trail, which prospectors called Dalton's Trail and later the Dalton Trail. During the Klondike Gold Rush many prospectors walked the trail to Fort Selkirk, where log rafts would float men, horses and cattle to

Dawson City Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest town in Yuko ...

. In 1900, the

White Pass and Yukon Route The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&Y, WP&YR) is a Canadian and U.S. Class III narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other rai ...

Railway was completed to neighboring

Skagway The Municipality and Borough of Skagway is a first-class borough in Alaska on the Alaska Panhandle. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,240, up from 968 in 2010. The population doubles in the summer tourist season in order to deal wit ...

. This ended much of the traffic on the Dalton Trail. The west portion of the present-day

Haines Highway The Haines Highway or Haines Cut-Off (and still often called the Haines Road) is a highway that connects Haines, Alaska, in the United States, with Haines Junction, Yukon, Canada, passing through the province of British Columbia. It follows ...

follows much the same route as the Dalton Trail.

References

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External links

* {{Coord, 59.364167, -135.87, display=title Atlin District First Nations history Geography of Yukon Grease trails Geography of Haines Borough, Alaska Hiking trails in Alaska Klondike Gold Rush Native American trails in the United States Tlingit Gold rush trails and roads Historic trails and roads in Alaska Historic American Buildings Survey in Alaska Native American history of Alaska