Occasionally I learn something or hear a tidbit of info that makes me smile to myself. Today’s tidbit was Chicken, Alaska. No, it’s not a dish and it doesn’t involve heating something frozen, which I imagine happens quite a lot in Alaska. Chicken is a town. Full time population of 17 to 37.
So why the heck is it called Chicken? Why not a nice name, like nearby Eagle. Eagle always did better in school, was on the track team and lets face it, Mom liked Eagle better than Chicken. And why can’t Chicken count? 17? 37?
Back in the 1800′s when Alaska was much heavier as it was full of gold, lots of people went up there to deal with this mineral obesity. While gold is nice to spend and shiny, its pretty tough on folks trying to eat it. So the locals turned to the (now state) bird the Ptargna. . . the patarma. . . the Ptarmigan. This cute fella right here.
By closely watching the habits of this plucky little birds, the miners were able to track down fresh supplies of grain, fruit and other bits of nature’s bounty thereby assuring that they were the first of Alaska’s sandal wearing, whole food eating vegan hippie residents. Nah, just kidding. They ate the little suckers.
Eventually 1902 rolled around and they filled the spot to capacity (somewhere between 17 and 37 people?) and had to make it into a town. They decided on the spot to name it after their favorite foodstuff. Problem was, no one really knew how to spell Ptarmigan. Hell, I can’t spell Ptarmigan and every time you see the word Ptarmigan you can rest assured that it’s a cut/paste from Wikipedia. Fearing ridicule from the rest of the world, they put between 34 and 74 pairs of eyes to searching for a good name for the place.
When that failed, I’m sure someone half-jokingly said “let’s just call the damned place Chicken and get back to rolling in our gold.” And that is how Chicken, Alaska came to be a town.
You can visit it today. In fact, if you’re driving from say. . . Hell’s Kitchen in New York to Chicken, Alaska – a trip of 4,099 miles, you can use these directions as provided by Google maps. They’ve got a cafe, a salmon bake and of course, a bar.
Despite my earlier mental picture of the place, the streets ain’t paved with gold. Or Ptarmigan bones, but rather packed gravel. And you’ll have to bring your own phones, electricity, internet and bathrooms as Chicken Alaska has none of these things.
Chicken has been thrust squarely into the modern age however, as they have their own website, hosted out side of the town, of course. Just how squarely into the modern age have they thrusted? Well, they seem to have landed somewhere between Lynx and the Animated Gif era. Regardless, I’ve officially added Chicken, Alaska to my list of places I’d like to see before I die.
Technorati Tags: chicken, Alaska, tidbit, factoid, facts, strange, drumsticks
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May 7th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Count me in! Do you think we can get them to host a comic-con event there? I’ll bring a comic… you bring a lighter and we can be GODS!
September 5th, 2009 at 8:09 am
well boys I went ther this summer and this is definitly a place to visit
…great people, great booze, and you can shoot your underwear with an homemade canon . Defintly rowdy and lovely . And got to Hyder too 
October 22nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
The town of chicken does have flush toilets (at the Goldpanner/Chicken Creek RV Park, they even have showers and electricity all night) but there are no phones at all except for sat phones. It is a beautiful place with mostly great people. Even the old-timer, crotchety miners are awesome. There are only 4 people who live there year-round though. The Postmistress, her husband (a gold miner), and two old-timer gold miners (well they might or might not still be gold mining, but to get either one of them to tell the truth…
December 11th, 2009 at 6:54 am
This is my first time on your blog and I enjoyed reading your good article.
July 21st, 2010 at 4:17 am
But the main fact of Alaska that Ekaterina the great has given in lend Alaska for 99 years, and just in 1966 when was Vietnam war that term was reached. Yeah – No land for russia in our country!!!! =)
August 16th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Hey, great blog, it was an enjoyable read. I can’t believe there’s a place called ‘Chicken’! Thats crazy.
Keep the posts coming!!!
September 26th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
mason0507 w
October 5th, 2010 at 3:39 am
I didn’t know there is actually a place named after chicken before i read this post.although this particular does sounds tempting to visit but i don’t think i can live a day without electricity or phone.
November 29th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Thanks for that info, very interesting. I get so bored of plain rice recipes but i’m not very skilled when it comes to cooking. There’s tonnes of unique ideas at this rice recipes site I found that you might find useful too.
December 2nd, 2010 at 4:27 am
hah, great town, you never know there’s existing one Georgetownfieldvillecounty location in US)))
January 8th, 2011 at 5:17 pm
This article has served me personally significantly with our exploration, thanks a ton for publishing this. I have saved it also for furture use as well as distributed it among my friend has they too would be fascinated!
February 7th, 2011 at 12:11 am
Great info once again. Thanks!
February 25th, 2011 at 9:14 am
I really want to get to Texas or any American city.
June 11th, 2011 at 6:39 am
How many global telecom stocks are trading at below 8 times trailing earnings while growing.