It had rained overnight, and it was cloudy, but the temperature was already 55 degrees. We packed up and got left from Riley Creek Campground in Denali National Park at 9:45 a.m.
We had only a short distance to go today (69 miles).
We were soon passing through Healy. Healy has a population of 1,027 and an elevation of 1,294 feet. It is a supply town to Denali, and was originally established as a coal-mining town in the early 1900s.
We are now about 20 miles from Nenana.
We crossed over Julius Creek.
We are now approaching the Nenana city limits.
Nenana is an Athabaskan word meaning "a good place to camp between rivers" and is the hub for tug boat/barge shipping in the interior. Nenana boomed in the early 1920s due to the Alaska Railroad construction. On July 15, 1923, President Warren G. Harding drove the golden spike at Nenana signaling the completion of the railroad.
We arrived at the Nenana RV Park and Campground at 11:30 a.m.
After getting checked in at the office, we got set up on site #10.
At 12:30 p.m., we then took off on a walk toward town. When we got into town, we found out that they were having a 100-year celebration (1923-2023) of the driving of the gold spike by President Harding.
We happened to arrive just in time to participate in the free lunch provided by the AK Rustic Company. We enjoyed a polish sausage on a bun, potato salad, chips and water (see below).
Above is the AK Rustic Company, who specializes in root beer floats and was also the sponsor of the free lunch today.
Mel is approaching the Nenana Depot and Railroad Museum.
The Alaska Railroad Museum and Railroad Depot was built in 1923 and renovated in 1988. The Nenana Railroad Depot is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Above is the medallion that commemorates the centennial celebration of the golden spike (1923-2023).
They even had the centennial celebration logo on the Alaska Railroad train.
Above is the Golden Spike facsimile that commemorated President Warren G. Harding's visit to Alaska -- when he came here to pound the golden spike signaling the completion of the Alaska Railroad from Tidewater to the Interior on July 15, 1923.
The above plaque commemorated the designation by the Alaska Railroad Corporation of the city of Nenana as the official site for the Formal Ceremonies to Commemorate Transfer of the Alaska Railroad from the Federal Government to the State of Alaska on January 5, 1985.
The above plaque commemorated the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Alaska Railroad on July 15, 1998.
Above is a look inside the Alaska Railroad Museum.
After looking around the museum, we decided to walk down to the big bridge and the railroad depot.
The Nenana Depot (above and below) located at 900 A Street in Nenana was built in 1922.
Above is a view of the Mears Memorial Bridge, which is a truss bridge on the Alaska Railroad, completed in 1923. The bridge spans the Tanana River at Nenana and at 700 feet long it is among the largest simple truss-type bridges in the world. The bridge's namesake Colonel Frederick Mears was chairman and chief engineer of the Alaska Engineering Commission, the railroad's builder and original operator.
We then decided to walk into town a little further.
We came to the above honoring the Nenana Ice Classic -- Alaska's greatest guessing game. The Ice Classic began as an ice betting pool in 1906 with six entries: Adolph Nelson, Jim Duke, Gunnysack Jack, Jonesy, Louis and Joe Johnson, and the first winner, Oliver Lee. After coming the closest to betting on the breakup of the Tanana ice, Lee won an equivalent amount of "a couple rounds at the trading post bar."
The ice pool subsequently became inactive until 1916. In that year, railroad workers revived the betting through ticket sales at Jimmy Duke's Roadhouse, but limited the betting to Nenana residents. After word of the lottery spread to towns along the local railroad by Alaska Railroad Commission workers, the lottery opened up to residents of the Alaska and Yukon territories in 1917. In 1917, a group of engineers surveying for the Alaska Railroad bet $800 putting in their guesses when the river would break up.
The tripod, which actually has four supports, is planted on the river ice between the highway and railroad bridges in Nenana, 300 feet from the shore. The tripod is connected to a clock which stops as the ices goes out, moving the tripod with it. The Nenana Ice Classic annual festival is the time that the tripod is erected on the frozen Tanana River. The tripod parts are built and painted prior to the festival sourcing local timber and enlisting community members.
Using a chainsaw, a trough is carved into the river ice which is usually around three feet thick at that time of year. The base of the tripod is lowered into the trough. An auger is implemented to bore a hole further into the ice until the river water is released, flooding the trough. This freezes the tripod securely to the frozen river. During the festival the community gathers together and uses ropes attached to the tripod uprights to lift it into place. The uprights are then secured to each other. A line is attached to the top of the tripod and once that end is anchored the other end is taken to the Ice Classic tower nearby on the banks of the river. Attached there to the clock inside the tower, when the ices goes out and moves the tripod 100 feet, the line breaks and stops the clock.
The St. Mark's Episcopal Church located in downtown Nenana is a little log building built in 1905. It is graced with hand-hewn pews and a raised altar decorated with Native beaded moosehide frontal and dossal hangings.
After we finished seeing the church, we walked down closer to the Mears Memorial Bridge.
And then walked over to see if the Nenana Cultural Center was open, but it wasn't.
We then walked along the walking trail to learn about what life was like along the river on interpretive panels. (The panel below talks about how dog teams moved mail, supplies and people on frozen rivers and trails.)
The Indigenous Alaska, office of the Native people is shown below.
Across the Tanana River from Nenana on the south slope of Toghotthele Hill sits the Nenana Native Cemetery (see the white cross in the picture below). The cemetery is approximately one mile east of the Parks Highway at the end of a gravel road that winds up the hill. A majority of the graves are surrounded by fences, which is fairly common for Native burials in many parts of Alaska. It's debatable whether erecting burial fences was borrowed from Russian America or reflects an independent indigenous tradition.
The main part of the cemetery was originally just along the high bank above the river. After a 1920 influenza epidemic in Nenana (when a quarter of the village's Native residents died), there were about 40 graves located there. However, when the Alaska Railroad built a bridge across the Tanana River and ran its tracks along the base of Toghotthele Hill in the early 1920s, it relocated many of the graves higher on the hill.
One of the surprises at the cemetery is a huge Celtic cross (shown below in the drawing) that marks the grave of Annie Cragg Farthing, the first Episcopal missionary at Nenana. She died while nursing one of the mission's boarding students, who also died a few days later. She and her young charge were buried side by side on the hillside overlooking the mission.
The remains of an old fish wheel is shown below in front of the Mears Memorial Bridge.
And then a little ways further down the trail sitting near the river in Nenana, we came to the old, destroyed and abandoned Alaska Railroad Passenger Car. It is a relic of the past, and a bit eerie without the windows.
The interpretive panel below tells how prior to the completion of the long span of the Nenana bridge, the narrow gauge railroad from Fairbanks was extended directly onto the ice each winter.
We then walked back to where the centennial celebration was taking place to see if the newly driven gold spike was in place. When we got there, the crowd was still milling around, but the ceremony was over.
Above Mel points out one of the newly driven gold spikes, while below is a close-up.
And then we decided to go it a call ita day, and walk back through town to our campsite.
The Rough Woods Inn & Cafe was a micro-brewery with German-style beer that was interesting to see (even though it wasn't open today).
Above is an eagle carving along with a carving of President Warren G. Harding.
Above is the tug boat Taku Chief that began its career in Southeast Alaska in 1938, when the age of steam boating on Interior Alaska rivers was dying. Gold mining, which had spurred a few decades of frenetic activity along the Yukon River and its tributaries, was waning. Airplanes were taking over much of the freight and passenger service, and diesel and gasoline engines were beginning to replace steam as boat propulsion systems.
Taku Chief was the last commercial wooden tug boat to ply the Yukon and Tanana river basins. In 1978 after several years of service, she was condemned, and she now rests in her last port, Nenana as a tribute to her being the heartbeat of Alaska transportation.
The statue and the sign below were dedicated to the Alaska Territorial Guard -- an army of 6,368 volunteers (many from the native population) that guarded Alaska's shores during World War II.
The Alaskan Gallery above also serves as the visitor center, but for some reason it too wasn't open today.
They handed out two free postcards to commemorate the 100th year celebration (see above). While the program of today's events is shown below.
Today was a special day for the city of Nenana as they commemorated the 100th anniversary of two important milestones in history of transportation in Alaska.
The first milestone occurred on July 4th 1923, when fledging pilot Carl Ben Eielson and a passenger flew from Fairbanks to Nenana and back. That was the first flight from one community to another and it occurred 100 years ago. Eielson also explored remote regions of Alaska by air, and in 1928 he was the first to fly over the North Pole enroute to Europe. Later that year, he also flew to Antarctica. But in 1929, he and his mechanic died in a plane crash in Siberia, where they had flown to help evacuate crewmembers of a ship stranded in the ice, along with its cargo of furs. Eielson Air Force Base was named after this pilot.
Above and below are pictures of pilot Carl Ben Eielson.
The second milestone was when President Warren G. Harding pounds the golden spike in a July 15, 1923 ceremony marking completion of the railroad line from Seward to Fairbanks by the Alaska Engineering Commission, which later was known as the Alaska Railroad Corporation (see next two pictures below).
Below, President Warren Harding and First Lady Florence Harding inspect a model of the Tanana River Bridge in 1923. The bridge was the final piece connecting the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Fairbanks.
Before arriving in Nenana, Harding stopped at McKinley Park Station and became the first and only sitting president in history to visit Denali National Park.
Below is an early map of the Alaska Railroad showing the 470-mile alignment between Seward and Fairbanks.
What an exciting day we had in Nenana. For dinner, we had pasta with spaghetti sauce.
We enjoyed celebrating the making of transportation history today!
Shirley & Mel
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