Six Quaint Small Towns To Visit In Alaska, North of Anchorage

The full article was published in Travel Awaits in November 4, 2021

Quaint small towns always tug at my
heart. Born in the developing world, I vividly remember the simple, laid-back,
and old-fashioned life. To get to know Alaska, it’s not enough to go to Anchorage
and Fairbanks, Alaska’s two big cities. To really get to know this last
American frontier, one must experience its smaller and more remote towns.

On two road trips from Anchorage to
Fairbanks, we discovered four such towns; and the Alaska-Canada border also presented
us with two others. These are the six that paint the inviting frontier picture
of Alaska north of Anchorage; and, in a subsequent article, I will write about
another six charming towns in the southern part.

Talkeetna

Dubbed the coolest of cool towns in
America, Talkeetna
is situated near the base of Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North
America. Located in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough with an estimated population
of a little more than a thousand, it is also at the confluence of three rivers:
Talkeetna, Chulitna, and Susitna. The three rivers offer best-of-Alaska
rafting, boating, and sports fishing.  And
in summer, it is only a three-hour train ride north of Anchorage.

We discovered the town when we got
hungry and looked for a place to eat on the way back to Anchorage after visiting
Denali National Park and being disappointed that McKinley was again hiding behind
the clouds. Lucky for us, the restaurant we found at the Mt. McKinley View
Lodge, just half a mile before Denali South right on George Parks Highway, had great
views of the venerable mountain.

Talkeetna is also a popular staging
point for as many as a thousand climbers who come to conquer McKinley every
year. Even flight-seeing tours and glacier landings originate from the
Talkeetna Airport, not Denali National Park. The many rustic miners’ cabins renovated
as lodging, restaurants, and shops are part of the town’s rich history and
charm.

Pro-Tip: During summer, Talkeetna is a
beehive of activities: outdoor markets, live music concerts, and other
activities offered at the Talkeetna Ranger Station. And during winter, you have
a good chance of seeing the Northern Lights here.

Healy

Less than three hours north of
Talkeetna is Denali National Park and only 11 miles north of the entrance is
the town of Healy in
the Denali Borough of Alaska with an estimated population of little more than a
thousand. It is a full-service, year-round community with plenty of lodging and
dining options and all kinds of supplemental activities for park visitors and transient
travelers into Interior Alaska. We camped once in Denali and on another trip,
we stayed at a B&B here.

Originally established as a
coal-mining town in the early 1900s, many of the residents still work at the
nearby Usibelli Coal Mine. After mining, the town’s second-largest industry is
tourism, including flightseeing operators of Denali. There is also the historic
Stampede Trail, originally built in the 1930s as a path to the Stampede Mine, Alaska’s
prime antimony producer until 1970. Now the trail has been included within
Denali National Park’s expanded borders and remains very popular with snowmobilers,
mushers, and skiers in winter, or with ATVs in summer.

Pro-Tip: This was the location of
Fairbanks City Bus 142 where Chris McCandless—of Jon Krakauer’s 1997 bestseller
Into the Wild—lived and died. It has
recently been relocated to the University of Alaska Museum of the North in
Fairbanks.

North Pole

Once you reach Fairbanks, the great
city of Interior Alaska, there are two towns that you should take the time to
visit. Both are part of the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The first is North Pole
with a population of more than 2.700. Just a little under 30 minutes from
Fairbanks, the town is still about 1,700 miles south of the Earth’s true
geographic North Pole. We love this town so much that we went back the second
time we were in Fairbanks. And, why not? This is the one place in the country
where it is Christmas every day!

Located on Mistletoe
Drive, the Visitor Center (closed from Sept. 1 to April 30) is an authentic
rustic Alaskan log cabin. There are two Christmassy “Welcome to the North Pole”
signs for Instagrammable shots. All streets in town are Christmas-themed: Santa
Claus Lane, Snowman Lane, Kris Kringle Drive, etc. Street lights sport a candy
cane motif and many local businesses, like Starbucks and McDonalds, are
designed such.

North Pole’s biggest
attraction is the largest Christmas Store you’ll ever set foot in. Named Santa Claus
House, its walls are covered with children’s letters to Santa. This modern-day
transformation of a trading post is where we sent postcards with “Christmas in
July” greetings to all our grandkids, postmarked North Pole, Alaska. Here, you
can be a child all over again, sit on Santa’s lap, and get lost in the huge
inventory of unique Christmas items. You will surely go home with quite a few.

Next to Santa Claus
House is the world’s largest fiberglass Santa at 42 feet tall, weighing 900
pounds. Santa’s reindeer, both real and not, reside nearby in what used to be
Santaland RV Park. We parked our RV there for a night in 2009 on our way to
Canada’s Yukon. It’s too bad the owners of the Park have closed it; but its Christmas
reminders were still there the last time we visited!

Pro-Tip: There is a celebratory landmark here called
“The Pole of North Pole.” It is one of two previously created; its twin was
pushed out of a plane over the real North Pole.

Chena

The other town is Chena, located near
the confluence of the Chena and Tanana rivers. Incorporated in 1903, it
disincorporated in 1973 and is now part of the outskirts of Fairbanks called
Chena Ridge, an hour’s drive from the city center. In its heyday, its population
was about 400. Today, it’s largely the Chena Hot
Springs and Resort.

We had an Alaskan lunch at the Resort
Restaurant—once the original pump station that provided water for the hydraulic
mining operations on the other side of Chena Ridge—in the Main Log Cabin.
Afterward, we walked around the facility, especially lovely that fall. I had
fun taking pictures of the small log cabins used for massage therapy, the
outdoor horse park, the Main Lodge, and the outdoor hot spring pools. There
were rental airplanes, Adventure Cats, ATVs, motorcycles, and canoes for exploring
the area. But we opted to join two tours.

The first was to the Aurora Ice
Museum, the world’s largest such facility, with ice sculptures that are more
than ten years old, crafted by a husband and wife team that won the World Ice
Sculpting Contest five times. Even if I was freezing—despite a large jacket
they provided—at the inside temperature kept at 25 degrees Fahrenheit through a
pioneering chiller technology, I was especially delighted at the great Ice Bar.
 

The second tour was to the first
low-temperature binary geothermal power plant built in Alaska. It was working
on alternative energy projects, including the production and use of waste
vegetable oil for fuel. The second part of this tour was to visit the
Greenhouse, where the Resort uses state-of-the-art technology to nurture plants
for all their vegetable and flower requirements.

Pro-Tip: The nearby Chena Lake
Recreation Area offers beaches, nature trails, and picnic areas.

Tok

There are also two small towns close
to the Canadian border, waypoints to the next adventure, where we spent a night
each. From Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, Canada all the way to Mile 1422 in Delta
Junction, Alaska, we completed navigating the famed Alaska Highway in a week.
From Delta Junction, we stayed the night in Tok, population under 1,400.  We arrived late at night and luckily the
campground’s local diner was still open. The next morning we woke up to a day
completely covered with smog from forest fires that were raging all
around.  That was unfortunate because we could
not explore this town called the Sled-Dog Capital of Alaska,” where everybody
in town is involved with dogs and mushing.

Pro-Tip: We recommend staying at the
Tok RV Village Campground.

Chicken

On our first trip, we decided to go
back to the lower 48 on a different route (not the Alaska Highway) detouring to
Dawson City in Canada’s Yukon. This route took us through an all-gravel road to
Chicken. The town’s summertime population was 32
(wintertime, 7), and we were told the town got its name because the residents
could not spell “ptarmigan.”  Chicken is all
of two campgrounds, one with gold-panning activities and the other with a
country store.  We stayed at the former
which is up a hillside where we witnessed a spectacular sunset.

Pro-Tip: The town had been up for sale
and recently it was bought by the owners of Jack in the Box— reportedly for
10,000 Cluck Sandwiches!

I hope you enjoyed this. Watch for my
next article on “Six Charming Small Towns of Southern Alaska.” 

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