Roadhouses remind of Alaska past

The Forks Roadhouse and its Alaska kin are reminders of our roots. Roadhouses and lodges provide a sort of time machine that lets us look back across our past, to remember what Alaska was like in its wilder days.

No matter how advanced tools like satellite phones, avalanche probes and cold weather gear become, the weather in Alaska can still kill you — a thousand different ways.

During the Gold Rush era in Alaska, roadhouses like the Forks Roadhouse, “Dry Creek” Road House along the Valdez Trail, Pioneer Roadhouse, which was in Knik, or the Kantishna Roadhouse in the Kantishna Mining District in Denali Park, were how travelers kept body and soul together.

Roadhouses were a place to rest your team of dogs or pack horses, get a warm meal and escape from the worst of the weather.

The Eagle-Valdez Trail was among the earliest overland routes to Alaska’s gold fields. About 1911, the improved Valdez Trail became known as the Richardson Trail and later the Richardson Highway.

In the Mat-Su Valley, the Carle Wagon Road was the supply route that led from the tidewater port of Knik to the Willow Creek Mining District in what is today known as Hatcher Pass, which takes its name from miner Robert Hatcher. It was Hatcher who staked the first quartz mine in the Willow Creek mining district in the Talkeetna Mountains in 1906. By 1915, many hard-rock mines had been established in the Hatcher Pass-Willow Creek area.

Even Palmer, better known for its 1930s Colonists, is named for pre-Klondike gold rush pioneer George Palmer, who was the first permanent white resident of the Matanuska Valley, settling in Knik in 1894.

Roadhouses, museums and place names are much of what remains of the Valley’s early hard-rock mining history. Today, it’s possible to drive from Knik to Hatcher Pass along Carle Wagon Road. But you’d never know it. There’s no marker to recognize the historic route.

The remains of Hatcher Pass’ largest mine, Independence Mine Historical Park, is part of the Alaska state park system. The former Wasilla Community Center is the Dorothy Page Museum. The Teeland-Herning-Mead store was moved from Knik to Wasilla years ago. Today it houses a tasty sandwich shop. Much has changed since Palmer became the area’s first permanent white resident 118 years ago. And much, much more has changed when we look back farther to the Ahtna Athabascan people, the area’s earliest residents. They’re still here. Just with thousands of new neighbors.

When the Forks Roadhouse burned this week, Southcentral Alaska lost a piece of its history and a bit of its unique local flavor. It’s worth remembering where we came from. It’s worth remembering how we got here.