The old ATCO housing units for the Westmark Hotel in Skagway were two long modular buildings across Spring street from the hotel. They were the first homes for many Skagway residents and seasonal employees. This week, new ownership began disassembling and preparing to ship one of the buildings to Haines to become low-cost housing in Eagle’s Nest Trailer Park. 

Alyssa and Ira Henry run Eagles’ Nest Trailer Park in Haines, and they acquired one of the old ATCO buildings from the Westmark in Skagway.  The deal has been in the works for several months before lumber prices recently soared.

The ATCO buildings look like one long structure, but they’re actually multiple smaller units pieced together. Alyssa Henry says they plan to create several two-bedroom one-bath dwellings available for rent later this summer at their trailer park.

Westmark of Skagway ATCO employee housing being moved to Haines.

“They’re 16 units. And then we were hoping for eight housing units. But one of them kind of fell apart. So seven,” said Henry.

Affordable housing in Haines has been in very high demand since the December storms that damaged or destroyed dozens of homes.

In Skagway, Passersby stopped for photo ops this week as they reminisced about their time spent in the employee housing. Saskia Racke says she lived there for a short stint in 2008 with her two dogs.

“I lived in men’s ATCO because women’s ATCO did not take dogs. There were 18 rooms, double occupancy, there were four showers, I don’t remember how many toilets…  Not enough! One kitchen, lots of parties, lots of hallway sneaking. Trying to sneak out the ATCO down that super long hallway with no one noticing was virtually impossible,” said Racke.

According to Racke, the men and women each had their own building, and fraternizing between the two wasn’t allowed.

Mark Thole said he didn’t live there, but he’d go there after work for the social scene.

“We’d meet at the ATCO ‘cause this person or that person was getting off work, and then we’d have a bunch of cocktails, and yeah, time to get rowdy and go out to the point and have a fire,” said Thole.

Jim Sager, General Manager of the Westmark Hotel in Skagway says the buildings were brought into town in the early ’80s after being used to house workers on Alaska’s North Slope during the construction of the oil pipeline. 

It was the first Skagway home for Sager back in 1992.

“You know, it’s a very small place with paper-thin walls, you get to know your neighbor a lot better than maybe you wanted to. But it was a clean, warm place to lay my head every night, and despite what you might hear was actually not a bad place to live,” said Sager.

Sager says the remaining modular building will be used by staff next year, but he hopes to have that building removed after next summer’s cruise ship season. The Westmark plans to upgrade staff housing, but not necessarily in the same location. No decisions have been made about what to do with that property once both units are gone.