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| Historic Gakona Lodge, where the trail splits. |
Ingenuity And Hard Work Led To The First Alaskan Lodges
Here at Bearfoot Travel Guides, our actual home is on the Richardson Highway. We live at the very place where the trail from the Gold Rush town of Valdez split in two as it pushed its way north through the rugged wilds of the Copper Valley.
One leg of the trail branched off to the Gold Rush boomtown of Eagle, on the Yukon River. This leg of the trail is now known as "The Tok Cutoff." The other branch of the Valdez Trail headed to Fairbanks, through the mountains past Rika's Roadhouse, at what is now Delta Junction. It's known as the Richardson Highway.
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| The Black Rapids Roadhouse. |
As Alaska grew -- only a century or so ago -- gold miners staggered up the trails, hauling with them unwieldy amounts of goods: raw beans, uncooked flour, bacon...
Then, some of them had an idea. They stopped in their tracks, put up a tent -- and opened up simple "roadhouses." Soon enough, there were dozens of lodges along the trails, providing warmth, shelter, friendship, safety, social structure, a bath -- and cooked food. Signposts were tacked up along the trees, telling how far it was to the nearest lodges -- and what they had to offer in the way of services.
Alaska tourism was up and running, Led, from the ground up, by ordinary Alaskans working on a "grass roots" level.