Yes, there really is a town with this name! It consists of two campgrounds, a cafe, a saloon, two gift shops (one with fuel) and a post office. The population is 21 in summer and 6 in winter. It was founded as a gold-mining town. The mining operations have ceased. Chicken was supposedly named by early miners who wanted to name their camp after the bird, ptarmigan. Unable to spell it they settled instead for chicken, the common name in the North for ptarmigan. This morning we awoke to a beautiful sunrise.
We were up early in order to take a grueling 3-hour, 100-mile trip to Eagle, AK. They have a walking tour of this old town at 9:00 in the morning. It was founded in 1897 as a supply and transportation center for miners. There was a military installation in the early 1900s. Ft. Egbert was a key communication center for Alaska. Lt. Billy Mitchell, who later became a general and was famous for advocating a U. S. Air Force, was in charge of running a telegraph wire from Port Valdez on the coast to Eagle. The road was all gravel with potholes, washboard, and it was along stretches where there were deep ravines with no guardrails. After the tour we had to return to Chicken to recover the motorhome, We left Chicken after trying some gold panning at the campground but were not successful. We left Chicken and headed for the Yukon border. The whole route to the border was gravel but somewhat better than the one we had taken to Eagle. We crossed the border and were awarded with a paved road which we traveled to a few miles short of Dawson City, Yukon..
No comments:
Post a Comment