I don't recall ever seeing a mention of Chicken, Alaska, without at least a reference to the origin of its name. I suspect that to do so involves great risk and I'm not about to be the first to try it. Ptarmigan, which eventually became Alaska's state bird, were plentiful around here when the area was a mining hot spot. That seemed like a good name for the town when it was incorporated in 1902. With no dictionary and no internet, agreeing on the correct spelling was impossible. The miners may not have known how to spell it but they knew what it tasted like and someone finally suggested they call the town Chicken and so it is. The town may or may not now contain a dictionary and one or two residents seem to have some sort of satellite internet connection but there is absolutely no cell phone service.

ADDENDUM: Nov 12, 2019 - A cousin who lives in Ohio is planning a trip to Alaska and we have had a few discussions on the subject. A recent one included flipping through a guidebook in which I noticed a picture of the border crossing at Boundary, Alaska. I commented on the fact that it is closed during the winter and that Canadian and U.S. officials share a single building. That prompted me to look at this journal for my own picture of the crossing, but I was surprised to find none. The one photo I have isn't particularly good and this page is pretty full, so either could be the reason I left it out. Or maybe there was some entirely different reason or none at all. In any event, I'm including my picture of the northernmost border crossing in the U.S. here. It's about twenty-five miles east of those pretty flowers and about two miles west of the sign in the next panel.

Dawson City was at the center of the 1896-1899 Klondike Gold Rush when twenty-nine million dollars worth of gold was found nearby. For a while, it was even referred to as the "Paris of the North" but the gold is mostly gone and Dawson City seems to rely a lot on tourism these days. The post office and bank were very important establishment back in the day and so were the many taverns. No, that chicken wire wasn't there to protect all that gold dust. It was added to keep tourists from messing with the artifacts. That space was open when this was an active bank. With just one way in and out of town, bank robberies weren't a big concern. We ended at one of the fancier saloons, and as Ode told her stories of gold rush winners and losers crowding in to celebrate or drown their sorrows, the significance of what I was looking at suddenly hit me. Right there in front of me was one of the world's earliest Klondike bars.