The old roadhouse at Slana may be unique among Interior Alaska roadhouses. Most roadhouses changed ownership numerous times. However, the Slana Roadhouse, built by Lawrence DeWitt in 1928, is still owned by the DeWitt...
Rika’s Roadhouse in later winter 2011 Big Delta—so named because of its location at the confluence of the Delta and Tanana Rivers, and to differentiate it from Delta Telegraph Station on the nearby Little...
I took this photo at the beginning of “summer,” and just came across it again. This is one of the original Paxson roadhouses, about a 1/2 mile north of Paxson Lodge. It is across...
These two cabins at Sourdough Roadhouse date back to its early Valdez-Fairbanks Trail days Margaret Murie, in her book, Two in the Far North, said that all the best roadhouses had a “Ma” to...
Old Chicken schoolhouse as it looked in the 1990s The first time we visited Chicken in the 1990s there was little you could see from the Taylor highway. Downtown Chicken (adjacent to the highway)...
John and Florence Sullivan (veterans of the Klondike, Nome and Fairbanks gold rushes) built a sod-roofed log roadhouse during the winter of 1905-06 midway along the 55-mile-long Donnelly-Washburn Cut-off. The cut-off was a Valdez-Fairbanks...
The Richardson Highway, like many roads in Alaska, has been rerouted many times. Its predecessor, the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail, experienced the same growing pains. Soon after the Valdez-Eagle Trail (the Trans-Alaska Military Road) was blazed...
Black Rapids Roadhouse in Fall 2011 Roadhouses were essential in Alaska during the early historical period. Situated a day’s travel apart (about 25 miles) along main trails they provided shelter and food for travelers,...
We took one last trip in our camper before freeze-up—a 500-mile round-trip down the Richardson Highway to Gakona Junction, up the Tok Cut-off to Tok, and then home via the Alaska Highway and Richardson...
Richardson Roadhouse in 1990, after it closed When I moved to Fairbanks in 1983, Richardson (about 70 miles southeast of town) was a pale shadow of its former self. There were just a few...
