Today Mark and I decided to drive up to Chicken. The story about this town was that the early miners were trying to think of a name for the town and they decided to name it after the ptarmigans which are Alaska’s state bird and are reportedly so stupid that they’re easy to catch and kill for food. Only the miners didn’t know how to spell ptarmigan, so since they sometimes called them Alaskan chickens, they named the town Chicken.
Chicken is up the Taylor Highway. If one continued on the Taylor Highway one would get onto the Top of the World Highway which is famous for being treacherous. Needless to say, we didn’t go that far.
We had lunch in Chicken and then we rented a pan for $20 and one of the employees showed Mark how to pan for gold. Mark spent about three hours at it. Here are some pictures:
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- This is most of the town of Chicken as far as we could see
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- Mark filled his pan with dirt and rocks
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- The guide taught Mark how to pan out the dirt and rocks and recognize gold
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- Mark and another newbie continued on their own
It boggles my mind to know that back before Alaska became a state, men would leave family and all the own, to travel to Alaska with all its perils in search for gold. The did the searching just as I was doing, where it would take them weeks just to find a dollars worth of gold. UN ReaL!!!!