Chicken, AK Part 2

The history of Chicken is rich and began with the discovery of gold in 1886 on Franklin Creek. A major discovery was made ten years later in 1896 on Upper Chicken Creek. It is said that 700 miners worked the area between 1896 and 1898. In 1903 a post office was established for a population of 400. Today there's a new post office but the population has dwindled to 3 in the winter and approximately 27 in the summer.

How did Chicken get it's name? Well, as the story is told the town was named by early miners. They actually wanted to name the town ptarmigan but were unable to spell it so they settled on chicken. The common name for ptarmigan in the north is chicken. 

It seems that everything is chicken in Chicken. There's a total of three businesses all with their own take on these feathered creatures.

 

 The Pedro Dredge was manufactured in San Francisco in 1938. It was shipped to Pedro Creek which is 15 miles north of Fairbanks, AK. It was in operation at Pedro Creek until 1958. It was moved to Chicken Creek and worked from 1959 to 1967. The Pedro Dredge produced around 58,000 oz of gold during it's time on Chicken Creek. This would equate to approximately 50 million dollars today. The dredge was listed as a National Historic Site in 2006.

Chicken is not only well known for gold discovery but also for being the home of the late Anne Hobbs Purdy, whose story is told in the book "Tisha".  The book chronicles Anne Purdy's life in 1927 in the Alaskan wilderness as a nineteen years teacher. A young native child could not say teacher so he called her "Tisha". In the old historic town of Chicken many of the original buildings are still standing...but just barely. They are all in such disrepair. 

The tour of old historic Chicken was amazing and informative. As we were walking toward and away from the town we had to constantly be on the lookout for moose and bears. Moose have young right now so they can be very dangerous. Grizzlies are alway in the area. I did make time to stop and smell the flowers.