Chicken, Alaska - Wild Tire Rides and Other Charms of Chicken

Until September 2007 the Jack Wade gold dredge sat alongside the Taylor Highway between Dawson City, Yukon and Tok, Alaska. Due to its deteriorating condition and safety concerns, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had it removed - some major parts have been set up near the Chicken post office, while the majority of it went to the Tok garbage dump. [Larry Johnson, 09/12/2009]

This town is located about halfway between the Alaska Highway and the Canada border on Route 5, pretty much the only community you will find on the Taylor Highway. Just south of the highway (which is a dirt road - welcome to Alaska) there is a "town" of about 4 buildings -- a gift shop, a bar, a museum, maybe one or two other things.

The thing to do here is the wild tire rides, which is where you cram yourself into a giant tractor tire left in one corner of the parking lot, then get your friends to roll you down the hill as far as you can go without vomiting. The record, apparently set by a local some years back, is about a quarter-mile or so down to the airstrip.

Once you partake of this insanity you are compensated by a complimentary Chicken Sling, which apparently is a foul-tasting alcoholic concoction, inside the bar. But the cool thing is the bar itself -- very tiny, but there are a staggering number of hats hanging from the wall from everyone who has been there, along with (if I remember right) business cards on the wall and a giant map of North America where you can put a pin from where you're from.

Also, a few miles east of Chicken along the Taylor Highway is an old abandoned gold dredge -- I think there's a rope or something up to discourage the curious but that didn't stop us.

And the friends I took the trip with reported that in Delta Junction, I think, along the Alaska Highway on the way to Fairbanks, there is a store called the Fur Shack which has a mannequin in the front window named Ethel wearing a fur bikini. [Shawn McCausland, 09/30/1999]