Chicken At Lasta

Chicken, the tourist trap at the end of 65 miles of bad road.

In Alaska they number the highways. As far as I can tell, they haven't reached double digits yet. They also call dirt roads highways. One is Highway 5 to Chicken and Eagle Alaska. We left the RV behind and drove the truck up there, its easier and a tougher vehicle. So why go to Chicken?...can you pass up a place with a name like that?

It really is named Chicken. It's attraction is gold mining. Back when, they decided to name the place and there were many ptarmigan running around there, so they decided to name it ptarmigan, but couldn't agree on how to spell the bird's name, so they gave up and called it Chicken.








This must be the mayor Of Chicken

 And, guess what, we saw a moose. This one was munching bottom plants out of a pond. Here are a couple of pictures. Now for the key question: "Do they keep their eyes open underwater?"

Maybe they wear goggles



The road in the background leads to Dawson City, YT

Here is the signpost leading to Chicken. Not muchthere.

Outhouses are in back

And here is downtown. It's really one building and one set of people. They go back and forth depending on where visitors are. They really live there in the Summer but move to Palmer in the winter. The main lady running the place had both feet in walking casts. She and Pat met each other on the trail to the outhouses and became instant companions in misery. After some visiting, I found out that the little bags of paydirt they sold really came from their mine which was the second right turn out of town (Would you like to buy it?). So I had to try a bag. I learned a lot about panning the real stuff. Their daughter helped us. I don't know about a teenager who is that good with gold pan. She has a real future. There were several other people panning in this trough but most of them didn't have the patience or Glenn's training so weren't too successful. I panned about 1/2 cup of what was in the bag and found an entertaining amount of color. The lady who ran the place said that she has a friend with an 11 year old son who comes by once a week and pans the bottom of the trough. He says there is a lot of gold in there and people aren't careful. That youngster has a bright future. He has a grip on two important facts already.

Like the Fairbanks region, the gold in Chicken is placer gold under permafrost, so they used the same dredging technology to get at it.  Here is a picture of the dredge that still sits at Chicken but is not running anymore.


Leaving Chicken going north, you come to an area on the South Fork of 40-mile River. It is a public panning area. I couldn't stay too long because we had to park in the road, but I found color in the sand that I tested. So I scooped up a bucketfull. Dirt for Glenn!

We drove back to Tok (rhymes with smoke), and tomorrow we're heading home. That's good and bad.