The Old F.E. Gold Mine Camp, North Pole, Delta Junction

Steese Highway runs between Alaska routes 2 and 6, connecting Fairbanks with Circle. It is 161 miles long. Forty percent of it is paved, sixty percent is gravel. We drove from Fairbanks to just past where the paved part of the road ends.  The mountains along this road were more rounded than the others that we had seen, and there were a number of rivers along the way. Just like the rest of what we've seen of Alaska, the views were breathtaking. 

We came across the old F.E. Gold Mine Camp. It was used to house the workers of the Chatanika Gold Mine from 1927-1957. It was built in 1927, restored in the 1970's, changed hands several times and is now owned by the daughters of the original owner. They have turned it into a restaurant and hostel. Housed in the original mess hall, the restaurant still has some of the original tables. We were not there at meal time, so we didn't sample the food, but we did check out the menu. I would definitely have eaten there. Much of the old camp remained, including the school house, living quarters, gold dredge and mining equipment. Its a fun place to spend a little time imagining what life was like for those men who worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.


After stopping for lunch at a very peaceful spot along the way, we pulled into the Cripple Creek BLM campground. Very nice. A definite possibility if you were looking for a place to camp along the Steese Hwy.

Our next stop was North Pole, Alaska. It is a very kitschy town with streetlights shaped like candy canes. If you are traveling with kids, it would be a great place to entertain them for a while. Make that a short while. It is so over the top commercial! The streets have names like "Santa Claus Lane". There is a huge tourist trap of a store called Santa Claus House. They actually had some very nice merchandise. Santa was walking around inside, their were live reindeer outside, giant Santa statues and sleds for those Kodak moments. I have to admit that there were some nice homes in town.  I confess to drinking hot chocolate at McDonalds so  I could say that I met Santa and drank hot chocolate at the North Pole. Its not THE North Pole, but its North Pole. Close enough.

From North Pole, we drove toward Delta Junction, spotting a huge bull moose along the way. We also finally got a glimpse of Mt. McKinley from an overlook on the way. We were on Rt. 2, aka Richardson Hwy, which is a long way from Denali but we could still see it towering over the other mountains. There isn't much to see in Delta Junction, so we drove on to Paxson.

There are so many great places to visit in Alaska! I hope you will get on the internet or look at books and check out some of the places that I have described. One of my favorite places and greatest experiences is still to come in a future post.