Skagway from Juneau: The Ferry Route, Highway 98 and a Day in Town

Early in the morning in Juneau, the harbor is still quiet and the mountains behind town hold on to their last shadows. Skagway sits at the far end of the Inside Passage, a gold rush town of wooden boardwalks and false fronts where the story of 1898 is still the main attraction. Getting there from Juneau means leaving the road system behind and thinking in terms of water, which is part of the charm.

How do you get to Skagway from Juneau?

The Alaska Marine Highway serves Juneau as a regional hub and Skagway as its northern terminus. Skagway is the northern terminus of the Alaska Marine Highway System, and Juneau is one of the regional hubs from which riders reach their final stop. The ferry is the way the two towns are tied together on the map.

The reason is geography. The only road out of Skagway to the rest of the continent is Highway 98, and it runs to Whitehorse in the Yukon by way of Carcross. It does not turn back toward Juneau. A traveler who pictures a morning drive from one capital city to a historic port will have to adjust the picture, since the route between them is a sailing through the channels of Southeast Alaska.

What decides your plan is the schedule. The Alaska Marine Highway publishes a Sailing Calendar that shows departures and arrivals month by month, and a Sailing Search tool where you enter a port and a date. Most communities in Southeast Alaska receive ferry service all year, but each sailing has its own day and hour, so the ferry timetable becomes the skeleton of the trip and everything else gets arranged around it.

The second thing that decides is how long you want in Skagway. The town is small, with fewer than a thousand residents, and its population doubles in the summer tourist season. A traveler who wants only the boardwalks and the depot has a different trip from one who wants the museums, the narrow gauge railroad and the long evening light on Broadway.

Ways to get to Skagway from Juneau

The Alaska Marine Highway ferry

The Alaska Marine Highway runs along thousands of miles of coastline and serves more than thirty communities, with mainline vessels calling at the larger towns and smaller day boats serving the smaller ones. Skagway is the northern terminus of the Alaska Marine Highway System.

Walk-on passengers in Juneau check in two hours before departure, and hand-carried baggage is allowed up to 100 pounds. Animals are restricted to the car deck and must be properly contained in an approved carrier or transported in a vehicle accompanied by an adult passenger. Those details shape how you pack: a day bag with a layer for the deck and something to read suits a sailing far better than a rolling suitcase of everything you own.

To choose a date, open the Sailing Calendar and sort entries by month, port or vessel. Clicking an entry opens the full schedule in a pop-up window, with arrivals in plain text and departures in bold.

If the calendar leaves you with questions, the Sailing Search tool answers a narrower one: this port, this day. The ferry suits travelers who like the journey to be part of the trip and who are comfortable building the rest of the day around a published sailing.

Highway 98 and the White Pass railroad

These two are the roads and rails you may hear about, and neither connects with Juneau. Highway 98 leaves Skagway for Carcross and then Whitehorse, which makes it the route for travelers coming down from the Yukon and not for anyone starting in Juneau. It matters here mostly as the reason the ferry is the way across the water.

The White Pass and Yukon Route is a narrow gauge railroad that grew out of the area’s mining past. Today it runs purely for the tourist trade during the summer months, starting from the port of Skagway.

Think of it as something to do once you arrive, a ride into the mountains behind town, not as a way of getting from Juneau.

Options compared

Put side by side, the three are less rivals than parts of one trip. Only the ferry answers the question of how you cross from Juneau, and the other two describe what Skagway offers once you are standing on Broadway. The railroad is the one to build a day around if you are visiting in summer, and the highway is the one to remember if your itinerary continues into Canada.

The timetable determines how much time you have in town. A traveler who wants a long afternoon on the boardwalks will look at sailings differently from one who wants a full overnight, and the Sailing Calendar makes both easy to compare by month. Read arrivals and departures together before settling on anything else.

Making a day of it

Start at the National Park Visitor Center, which occupies the restored 1898 rail depot at 2nd and Broadway. The park suggests beginning there to learn about programs, tours and the film.

The film is called Gold Fever: Race to the Klondike and runs 24 minutes in the theater, a good introduction to why this quiet town at the end of a long inlet once held a crowd of stampeders heading for the Yukon. Ranger chats are offered daily, and their topics vary, so ask at the desk which one is next.

From the depot, walk the Historic District, where gold rush boom town buildings are part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. Four National Park Service museums in Skagway cover the history, and you can drift between them at your own pace. Visitors can also explore Skagway on their own without a guide, and the town is built for exactly that kind of wandering, with wooden sidewalks, shopfronts that look like a film set and the mountains standing close at the end of every street.

If you prefer someone else to organize the day, Skagway has a variety of commercial tours. The Skagway Convention and Visitors Bureau is the official visitor department, and M & M Tours is the only tour brokerage contracted by the Municipality of Skagway. The White Pass and Yukon Route is one summer excursion option, a narrow gauge ride that begins at the port.

Allow time to sit in a café on Broadway, because Skagway is a place to look at as much as to tick off. The town is also a popular stop for cruise ships, and the tourist trade is a large part of its business, so the main street takes on a busier rhythm on days when ships are in port.

A traveler arriving by ferry from Juneau has a different pace from the ship passengers. You come with a bag and a sailing schedule, which determines how long you can stay. That is the quiet reward of the ferry: a few unhurried hours with the old depot, the museum rooms and the boardwalks, with the mountains going dark behind the rooftops.

Good to know before you go

Plan around the published ferry schedule first, since every other choice depends on it. Anyone visiting between October and May should read the park’s guidance on visiting in winter before counting on a particular building or program, because the park itself asks winter visitors to do so.

Keep your baggage within the ferry’s allowance and, if you are traveling with an animal, remember that it stays on the car deck in an approved carrier.