After the Gold Rush begins in January 1926, when the ship carrying Robert Dahl steams into the harbor in Skagway, Alaska. The ten-year-old boy has been traveling for over a week with his mother and two brothers from the tiny town in northwest Iowa where he was born. As the ship's crew prepares to dock, the brothers eagerly scan the wharf for a glimpse of their father, who arrived a few weeks earlier to become the town's only physician.

Driven by hopes of finding Yukon gold, thousands had once passed through Skagway. By the time of the Dahl family's arrival in 1926, the population had shrunk to five hundred. Although some buildings remaining from the Gold Rush days made sections of Skagway look like a ghost town, the young boy from the plains of Iowa was entranced by the wild beauty of the surrounding mountains, which he would explore in the years to come.

In this highly personal tale of Robert Dahl´s years in Skagway, we meet the people of the town at school, at work, at play, hunting and fishing. We meet town "characters," a few remaining from the Gold Rush days, others whose drifting had ended in Skagway. We meet Tlingit Indians, who were made "outcasts in their own land" by the visible and invisible barriers of small-town life.

The author concludes with the hope that "this lovely piece of our world will be preserved as long as human beings, and our fellow creatures who inhabit those splendid mountains, valleys, forests, rivers, streams, and, yes, even the glaciers, continue to live on this earth."