Chicken, AK – Monday, July 25,2011
Our plans for today are to go to Eagle, AK at the end of the Taylor Highway. We considered going to Dawson City, but thought we would try Eagle first to see how bad roads are. Bear in mind that even though the Alaskans call this a highway, it is still a dirt and gravel road. We left BG in Chicken and headed out for the day in the Element.
The Alaska Department of Transportation has a great sense of humor as evidenced by the speed limit signs they put on the Taylor Highway. Posted at 50 MPH, parts of your car would start falling off and your tires would only have a momentary acquaintance with the road surface if you tried to go that fast.
The road was pretty bad in spots and got better once we were past the Dawson City turn off. It was a gorgeous drive, running along the ridge of the mountain tops.
And even though we were on the edge of civilization we still had pedestrians(caribou) to contend with that refused to use sidewalks.
After 3 hours we finally reached Eagle.
We were pretty excited because this was a destination visited by Holland American bus tours and they even had a cruise boat that ran the Yukon River between there and Dawson City. If they came here you know it had to be great. It is a tight knit little community that consists of about 160 very self sufficient individuals and it had one store that closed at 5pm. It was also the grocery store and filling station. So what was Holland America coming to see?
As it turns out, 2 years ago there was an ice jam on the Yukon River. When the ice jam broke, it released a torrent of water that wiped out the riverfront and most of the tourist attractions. Then last year, there were several major slides closing the highway for several months. Holland America hasn’t visited since. The ice jam also completely wiped out Eagle Village where the local indigenous people lived.
We did visit the local Ranger Station and they gave us a private tour of the fort. Eagle is the site of Ft Egbert built in 1899. It served two primary functions at that time. To keep the peace and to provide sanctuary to the people that were ill prepared for the winters.
Eagle was on the path of the gold rush. Apparently all those miners were a pretty rough bunch and the Army had to step in to maintain law and order.
Later the fort was responsible for helping to develop and maintain a trail to Valdez so there would be a direct route to the gold fields that didn’t go through Canada. After that, the same trail was used to establish a telegraph system to Valdez again bypassing dependence on Canada in relaying Army messages to and from Washington DC.
The buildings that remain also house an eclectic collection from the areas history. Gold panning/mining, mail delivery via sled dogs, vintage vehicles (which actually still run & are used once a year in a parade), fur trapping/trading and river travel. We spent almost 3 hours with this local ranger who had lots of stories. He even gave EJ gold panning lessons.
After our tour, we drove around the rest of town. Building codes are obviously not an issue here. Better watch that first step!!
As we said before, the residents here are a hardy bunch. The road here is actually closed mid September and not open again until sometime in May. They have to have enough of everything to get by. They still use sled dogs and there is a short air strip, but, basically they are on their own. Until the river freezes some use it as a way to get their supplies.
It started to rain and it was 6pm, so we headed back down the road. Well, rain and dirt/gravel roads aren’t a great mix. The road was awful, even some of the good parts were now bad. The Element looked like we went off roading in a mud bog. Since we got home so late and were worn out, we decided to stay in Chicken another day to catch up. We won’t be going to Dawson City as the Top of the World Road will most likely be the same and more rain is predicted.
| BG Miles Today | 0 | BG Total Miles | 5540 |
| Eat Out total $ | 477.88 | BG Total Fuel $ | 2984.93 |
| Entertainment total $ | 141.52 | Total Camping $ | 638.88 |
| E Miles Today | 200 | E Total Miles | 1815 |
| E Total Fuel $ | 356.99 | Day # of Trip | 55 |
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