H: Gold! And Chicken Alaska

The Top-of-the-World Highway from Dawson City to Chicken is the Bottom-of-the-Barrel Roadway.  But the stopover in the mining town of Chicken was educational and the population was delightful.  Chicken makes an ideal entry point into Alaska and metaphor for GOLD and its influence on the Great Northwest.  Chicken is conveniently located near other poultry-posited-posts around the world

  Chicken Alaska has two large RV parks, a General Store and a Post Office.   Chicken has 115 square miles in it's city limits - about 60% larger than Plano, Tx.  In the summer, Chicken fills the town with residents and tourists; and the creeks and valleys are full of prospectors working their various "claims".  At the last Census, Chicken's population was listed at 7 year-round residents (vs Plano at 269,776).  Only three of these seven Chicken residents live in the urban area of the town: the Postmistress, her husband and an old-timer who …"refuses to leave".

Mike and Lou Busby are proprietors of the Chicken Gold Camp RV park.  She operates one of the most interesting and diverse Gift Shops in the Klondike, and Mike is a Gold-Bug.  He was World Champ gold-paner in 2012, and lists his largest, single pan at 10.75 Oz Troy.   The Busby's have earned their sourdough credentials, but now winter just one state away (alphabetically) in Arizona, about 25 miles north of the Mexican border.  The namesake statue for the city was designed and built by students of a friend of theirs in the Shop and Art classes at a regional high school (fashioned from materials salvaged from their recently replaced school lockers).

Gold was discovered in Chicken in 1894, two years before the Dawson discovery.  But, Dawson was on the Yukon and Chicken was in the boonies.  Mining for gold is still a way of life in Alaska - although Nevada is the largest producer today.  Mining shifted from individual prospectors to major companies just after WW-I.  Big corporations swept into all the major producing areas, bought out all the small claims, and mechanized the process with millions of dollars of capital (a'la Dredges for valleys and Water Cannons to blast away at hillsides).  There are still a dozen or so major companies in the NorthWest, but there are also thousands of individuals operating small claim-sites.   Alaska gold production today is a couple thousand ounces of Gold per year, down from a peak of over a million ounces per year just after the First World War.

In the 80's, Mike Busby took advantage of the downturn in gold production, He bought a Dredge from a defunct company in Fairbanks, purchased claims in and around Chicken and then started digging when the price of gold got high enough to pay back his investment.  Running a dredge takes a tremendous supply of water, a crew outside to prep the ground, and enough fuel to run two 250KW Diesel generators around the clock.  This 80-ton Dredge now sits idle, and Mike gives wonderful tours of the plant, inside and out.   But, Mike tells us that his daughter and her fiancé  are showing interests in re-opening the dredge… see how they run!

Names of cities in the Last Frontier are strong indicators of the spirit, vigor and humor of its citizenry.    

• Chicken is an interesting name for a town, and the way it came about is even more notable.  Many of the original settlers wanted to name their town after the Ptarmigan, an indigenous prairie chicken.  But, they couldn't agree on the right way to spell Ptarmigan , SO…

• Not so different is the naming of the port town of Valdez (pronounced here as ValDEEZ).  The Bay of Valdez was named in 1790 by a Spanish explorer, Fidalgo, for the Admiral who was then head of the Spanish Marines.  During the gold rush in the 1890's, the town of Valdez sprang up.  In this case, the townspeople clearly knew how to spell the name they wanted to give the town; but they couldn't agree on the pronunciation.  SO … they voted.

 

Finally our You are here map: As an exercise and an indication of the quality of roads, ask google maps to plot you a driving route from Dawson City, Yukon to Chicken, AK…  See if you get the map for walkers that is shown below.  Tour Miles 2062-2170