Chicken, Alaska

Leaving Tok

Chicken's 3 businesses

Murray & Marie in front of our lunch spot

Chicken & Dredge (relic from gold mining days)

Chicken's take on Santa's Sleigh - replacing reindeer with chickens

Eric & Marie heading out of Chicken - into the clouds...

Our time in Alaska is drawing to a close, but we couldn't leave the state without visiting just one more town. The town of Chicken. The town is a relic from the gold boom days. The locals wanted to name the town 'Ptarmigan' after the Alaska state bird, or was it because many miners caught Ptarmigan and cooked them for a tasty pot dinner and wanted to memorialise them in history. Either way, when they went to register the name, none of the miners could agree on the right way to spell Ptarmigan, and as they also called the Ptarmigan 'chickens' in those days, they decided to just call the town 'Chicken' instead.

The town has no electricity (they use generators) and no internal plumbing (they use outhouses). No phone service either, and the mail plane lands twice a week. The population is around 9 in the winter, and swells to just under 40 in the summer. Gold is still being found locally by miners and many tourists pay to pan for gold - and on the day we were there, some gold was found. Nothing to write home about though!

The weather during our visit to Chicken was wet on & off, and it was miserable. Considering there are no paved roads and no footpaths etc, it made for a muddy visit. There are only 3 businesses (a cafe, a gift shop and a saloon) as well as 3 basic campgrounds, and after one night we were keen to move on. Stopping in Chicken was just a means to an end - it was the starting point for our drive along the infamous Top of the World Highway.