“I love tourists! I can tell them ANYTHING and they believe me.” -Toad, Chicken, AK to my husband Ray
In honor of mine and DK’s upcoming collaboration, I thought I would re-post this little segment on one of the more colorful characters of Chicken, Toad, plus a little history.
We constantly get asked why did we pick Chicken Alaska to build a cabin? A few people who know something about Alaska immediately ask if we mine for gold. Our answer is typically, no, we watch other people lose money mining for gold.
A misconception is that gold was found in Chicken as part of the Bonanza Gold Rush in the Klondike. In reality, gold was found in Franklin Creek in the Forty Mile River (near what would later be called Chicken) in 1886. In 1891, gold was found in Chicken Creek. On August 17th, 1896 the Bonanza Gold was discovered south of what is now Dawson City in the Yukon. Gold was being mined for almost ten years in the region before the big strike.
In 1902, Chicken became the second legally incorporated city in the interior district of Alaska (Alaska would not become a State until 1957). Purportedly, they named it Chicken because of the abundance of ptarmigan in the region. They wanted to name it ptarmigan, but could not agree on the spelling, so they decided to name it Chicken instead.
The purpose of this post is not a history lesson but to share some of the stories of the colorful characters who inhabit Chicken year-round. The state stops maintaining the road October 15th. Per the 2010 census 10 people still lived out there the whole year. But we know from talking to our friends only about six remain.
One of those characters who has since left was Toad. If you follow my tweets at all, he was one of the last people to work for Fairbanks Exploration before they closed down operations in the 1960’s. They literally shutdown in the fall, thinking they would come back, but due to declining gold prices and increasing cost of operation, they never returned. Several of their dredges remain scattered throughout the state. The picture at the top of this blog is the “Lost Chicken Dredge” The picture below is the Pedro Dredge, which you can tour at the Chicken Gold Camp in Chicken.
They paid Toad for quite a few years to stay on as a caretaker in Chicken, believing they would come back. They never did.
Eventually Toad moved to his own place eight miles off the Taylor Highway and stayed out there alone until he was in his mid eighties. My husband would send him cigars and chat with him at the bar. The cook at the café insisted the man was secretly DB Cooper, since he always paid in $20, $50 and $100 dollar bills from the 1960’s and 70’s.
Last year, he finally decided he’d had enough and moved to the “big town” of Tok.
Thanks for reading! This week’s prompt will be the word heat, or lack thereof. Some people always assume the interior of Alaska is cold. The record low for Chicken is -79. But in the summer it can hit over 90 degrees. What heat will our characters experience as it gets closer to the solstice?
Judging from last week, things are about to get crazy.