NORTH TO ALAKSA 2025 - DAY 67 - TAYLOR HIGHWAY, WALKER FORKS AND CHICKEN ALAKSA!

It is time to travel further north and east on the Taylor Highway. We are headed to that crazy quirky town called Chicken! 

We are reduced to mostly gravel roads, full of washboards and potholes. There are areas where the dirt has eroded away at the sides due to rainfalls that could easily crumble if you get too close. We are mostly traveling in the middle of the road.  Of course, no guardrails!

Every now and then some sections had been pavement. But they were actually worse than the gravel sections! At least the gravel can be regraded and smoothed over. When the gravel meets the pavement there are big bumps, then there are big bumps when you go back off the pavement onto the gravel again. It was pretty slow going and at times we were doing 10 or 15 mph.

But the scenery was worth it all!

Breathtaking doesn't even begin to describe it. I felt like I needed to go out and run in circles with my arms spread wide like Maria.... and start singing "the hills are alive..."

We finally came upon the town of Chicken. It was so named because it was too hard to spell "Ptarmigan"!!!

Here is the story: 

"The Alaskan town of Chicken owes it's name to the humble ptarmigan, a bird that was a crucial food source for the miners who settled the area in the late 19th century. When the town was established and incorporated in 1902, the settlers wanted to name it Ptarmigan. However, there was a problem: nobody could agree on how to spell "ptarmigan". The solution? They opted for a name that was much easier to spell and still recognized the bird that had sustained them: Chicken."

The first stop we made was to the Chicken Creek Cafe. Steve was following the scent with his nose, like a hound on the hunt. He knew they had great big cinnamon rolls. And he knew where to get them!! 

They were huge! And spread with rich cream cheese frosting. We bought one to split. Then we bought a second one for the next day, and they put the frosting in a separate container for us so it didn't get all mushy during 24 hours. (If it lasts that long). Steve might snitch for a midnight snack??

We drove over to the iconic chicken on display. This beautiful masterpiece was made by high school students as a project. They recycled old school lockers for the metal and tack welded the pieces together. It is magnificent! 

The rusting of the steel just adds to the texture and the colors. How perfect. His name is "Eggee".

We did our "tourist pose" thing next to the statue and along with the signpost. It's hard to read but it is all different towns around the world that have chicken type theme sounds to their names. 

There, I lightened it up so you can read the names...

Next we wandered over to the Pedro Gold Dredge. There are guided tours available, but not during the time frame that we were there. We had done our research ahead of time. This is a really interesting piece of equipment and part of the history of gold mining in the area.

FOLLOWING IS SOME INFORMATION I FOUND ONLINE.... IN RED TYPE

The Pedro Dredge was owned by the Fairbanks Exploration Company (FE Co.), a subsidiary of the United States Smelting Refining & Mining Co. (USSR&M). It spent less than a 1/3 of its operating life on Chicken Creek.

Until 1998, the Pedro Dredge was hardly visible, resting on upper Chicken Creek where it had been parked in 1967. In the fall of 1998, the dredge was moved a mile to it's present location in the center of Chicken by it's new owner, Bernie Karl, and the owner of the mining claims, Mike Busby. The million-pound artifact was moved in one piece, and took less than two weeks of preparation and two weeks of actual moving, during which 120 tires were used to support it.

(Their photos of it being moved... The rest of the photos are mine)

   

  

  The 3-cubic-foot dredge (measurement of the bucket capacity), the smallest in the FE Co.'s dredge fleet, was originally built to mine the fairly shallow gravels of Pedro Creek, north of Fairbanks.

The Pedro dredge, originally driven by steam, was built by the Yuba Manufacturing Company in California, and was shipped from Oakland on the S.S. Point San Pablo on April 1, 1938. It was assembled on Pedro Creek and began operating on July 11th. The Dredge operated on Pedro Creek, with the exception of the war years, until October 1958. Having completed its available ground there, it was decided to move it to Chicken Creek, as the Cowden Dredge, also belonging to the company, had suffered from years of neglect. It still rests in the Mosquito Fork of the Fortymile River, and can be seen from a lookout at the end of a good hiking trail. 

 The Pedro Dredge was disassembled on Pedro Creek and trucked to Chicken beginning in June 1959. The move and reconstruction were completed by September at a cost of $148,095. During the re-construction, the dredge was updated to diesel-electric, adding two Cat 375 engines for power. The dredge commenced operations on lower Chicken Creek in September and worked approximately five months every year thereafter until October 1967, when it produced its final cleanup.

  There were many hazards related to dredging in a northern riverbottom. In the spring of 1961, the Pedro Dredge was flooded by an early spring thaw that flooded the dredge pond before the dredge could be thawed loose from the still-frozen pond. Stuck in the ice, the dredge was unable to float on top of the flood as would normally happen.

 During its production years on Chicken Creek, the dredge washed about 2,500 cubic yards of gravel each day (29 buckets per minute) at a cost of around 30 cents per cubic yard. Between 0.30 and 0.80 ounces of gold were recovered from each cubic yard of gravel. 

There were normally 16-20 men employed in the operation, with 10-12 involved directly with the dredging and the remainder mostly associated with thawing ground ahead of the dredge. The dredge mined over 55,000 ounces of gold in the eight years on Chicken Creek.

(That is worth $183,000,000 today!)

After we were done poking around the dredge, we went on over to get some fuel at the Goldpanner.  It's kind of cute, you wait out at the locked pumps wayyyy across the lot,  and a little old man comes wandering on out. He unlocks the pumps for you and stops to chitchat. He asks where you're from and he tells you where other people were from that day. I think he kind of keeps a running tally of where people are from?

After we got our fuel, we saw some people that we had met back at the Alaskan Stoves Campground in Tok! 

There are a group of three Harley riders and a fourth person following in a vehicle with a cargo trailer with camping gear and repair supplies. Their group is called Oneness In All Riders, out of Surrey, British Columbia.  Here is their Instagram link: 

https://www.instagram.com/onenessinallriders?igsh=ZDFhcHV6M3Q4MXFn

They took the time to pose with a couple other bike riders that were there, as well as a fellow guy from Wisconsin, and Steve in the "lineup".  All the guys. I took some group pics for them on each of their cameras.

After they stopped at Chicken, they are going to be turning North and going all the way up to the Arctic Ocean! What a tough bunch. 

I'm glad they had another vehicle following with repair supplies and a way to transport a bike if something happened.

We watched them all right off and bid them farewell. It's all on the video and the link down below.

We also took the time to do a few of the tourist things in Chicken. And pose for a few photos too!

But then it was time to head out and hit the highway. Well, not actually a highway if you look at the type of terrain we are driving on...

But it's the only road, and it's called the Taylor Highway until it reaches the turn off to go up to the Arctic. Then it is called the Top of the World Highway. We will get there tomorrow. About 200 miles a day is our limit or about 4 hours of driving. Then we are done.

We found the turn off to another beautiful little BLM campground. This one was called Walker Forks. Look at this inviting road into the campground...

Doesn't that make you just want to stay and set up and relax? Crack open a beer or get a beverage of your choice? Time to relax.

We got all set up and one of the sites down at the end of the loop. There were a lot of pull through sites up in the wooded trees. But we opted to be down closer to the water. We could hear it rushing from the open windows of our motorhome.

It was time to take it easy. Nick agrees. We've been going - too far - too fast - for too many days. Now it was time to slow down a bit.

Especially before tackling the next section of that highway!

Here's the link to the YouTube video that goes along with today's blog: 

Only 36 miles travel today 

5,658 miles traveled so far