Lee and Karen
Duquette,
The Two RV Gypsies: Full-Time RVers
in
Chicken Alaska in 2009
The Two RV Gypsies: Full-Time RVers
in
Chicken Alaska in 2009|
Lee and Karen
Duquette, The Two RV Gypsies: Full-Time RVers in
Chicken Alaska in 2009 |
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Scenery
on the road from Tok, Alaska to Chicken, Alaska. The curvy dirt and gravel
road extended for miles up the hill and around corners. Fun, Fun, Fun
(not really) and more dirt on the car (OH JOY). |
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 The
Fortymile Caribou Herd: Imagine the sight and sound
of 500,000 caribou moving across the tundra as they did in this area in
the 1920's before over-hunting, severe winters, and high predation caused
a dramatic decline, changing the landscape completely. By 1973, the herd
numbered only 6,500 caribou. The entire ecosystem was dependent of the massive
Fortymile herd, the center of the food chain. When the herd declined, the
entire ecosystem suffered. Caribou was the mainstay of the wolf's diet with
each wolf eating at least 25 caribou a year. With fewer caribou, wolves
killed more moose so the moose and wolf populations also declined, as did
wolverines, coyotes, foxes, common ravens, gray jays and black-billed magpies.
Now caribou are seldom seen here. |
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Below: Much of the road
to Chicken, Alaska had forestry areas that were previously destroyed by
major fires. |
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Below: Airport Road in
commercial downtown Chicken, Alaska. It consists of only three (3) businesses. |
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Below: The door to Chicken
Creek Cafe and the service call button |
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| Chicken, Alaska - According to the 2008 Milepost book, (which tourists should buy each year) there is no city water, sewer, or electric service in Chicken; it does have wells, generators and outhouses. Chicken was supposedly named by early miners who wanted to name their camp ptarmigan, but were unable to spell it and settled instead for chicken, the common name in the north for the ptarmigan bird. Chicken is perhaps best known as the home of the late Ann Purdy, whose book, Tisha, was based on her experiences as a young schoolteacher in the Bush. | |
| The Pedro Dredge No. 4 operated on Chicken Creek between 1959 and 1967, after mining Pedro Creek outside Fairbanks from 1938 until 1959. It was then purchased and moved with other mining equipment down to Chicken in 1998 as a tourist attraction and was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. Tours are available. | |
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 Mining
dredges were used in Alaska and Yukon from the turn-of-the-century to the
1950's. The dredges were land-locked floating machines, digging ponds that
allowed them to float across the area to be mined. They operated 24 hours
a day from late April or early may and ending in November. The bucket-line
dredge used a continuous line of buckets called the "digging ladder"
(shown above) to scrape the bottom and edge of the pond. The buckets carried
the mud and rock to a screening area, where the heavier metal particles
were separated from the rest of the material. After the metal was captured,
the waste rock - "tailings" - would be deposited out the back. |
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| There is a post office in Chicken with twice weekly mail service. Cell phone service was sporadic. There is even a small airport. A big attraction in Chicken is looking for gold. | |
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| Above: The Goldpanner is the RV Park office and gift shop. It provides free coffee, and has a regular washroom with flush toilets. | |
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Next,
Lee and Karen Duquette returned to Tok and Lee drove their motorhome
through the Mount Wrangell area on the way to Valdez. 
