Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

On Saturday, my friend Lori and I took a drive to Denali Park after hearing that the road was open to Savage River. We didn’t get on the road as early as I would have liked to, but it worked out OK anyway. Lori met me at my house at 10:30am and off we went.

The sun was shining as we left Fairbanks on the Parks Highway. Generally, if you can see Denali from the scenic overlook just outside of town (mile 344.4), there’s a very good chance that the mountain will be out when you get to the park.  We could see the base of Denali, but the top of it was obscured with clouds. That wasn’t a good sign. If the top is already obscured when you get there, chances are the clouds will come in and totally wrap around the mountain before you get to the park. Regardless, we were both looking forward to the drive, even if the mountain wasn’t out.

Several years ago, a friend of mine who lived in Nenana (Carol - who is now deceased unfortunately) told me about a cemetery in Nenana that was for the non-native population. If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you may recall that my friend Lisa and I visited the Native Cemetery, which is in a gorgeous location, on the side of Toghotthele Hill, overlooking the Tanana River. (Toghotthele means “mountain which parallels the river”.) While visiting Nenana, Lisa and I asked a resident where the other cemetery was, but we weren’t able to find it.

I used Google Earth to look at the area around Nenana, hoping to find the other cemetery. While I wasn’t able to see any grave markers (I LOVE Google Earth!), I did see a dirt road named “Cemetery Road”! What are the chances of a road being named “Cemetery Road” if it doesn’t lead to a cemetery? Armed with a general location, Lori and I kept our eyes open just after we passed through Nenana. Unfortunately there are several roads without street signs. We had a general idea of where it was, but decided we’d look for it on our way back from the park.

The drive into the park, while gorgeous, was not fruitful for wildlife sightings. I saw one (dead!) hare, and that’s it. No ptarmigan, no moose, no lynx, nothing! What a disappointment in that respect, but still a lovely day for a drive.  My favorite thing about the Denali early spring landscape is the deep russet color of the willow brush against the bright white of the snow.

Skies were party cloudy in some areas, and a beautiful blue in others. As expected, there was no view of the mountain when we got to the park.  As we got closer to mile 15, we caught a glimpse of some movement down on the frozen river.  Ice skaters were enjoying the wide expanse of river, surrounded by wilderness and peace and quiet. I wished I was skating with them.

We drove as far as we could, snapped a few photos along the way, and then turned around and made our way back to Fairbanks. Here are some photos I took inside and near the park:

When we got to the outskirts of Nenana, Lori and I kept our eyes open for the road that would lead to the cemetery. We knew it was near the airport, and turned onto the only road that was in the general vicinity. The snow was a little deeper than I hoped, but my little car did a fine job of getting through it. The road went through some trees, past a house and a gravel pit, across the railroad tracks, and then through more trees.

Finally, we saw the white-washed wooden crosses of the cemetery. Although there was a portion of the cemetery set aside for more recent ‘residents’, the majority of markers we saw had one thing in common.  While there were various birth dates, many of those buried in this part of the cemetery died in 1920.

I remembered my friend telling me that the cemetery was mostly filled with people who died during an epidemic in the early 1900s. I didn’t remember any more details, so I did some online research.  What I found was that between 1918-1920 there was an influenza pandemic, known as the Spanish Flu.

From the Search.com reference site: The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was a category 5 influenza pandemic that started in the United States, appeared in West Africa and France and then spread to nearly every part of the globe. It was caused by an unusually severe and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Many of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients.

The Spanish flu pandemic lasted from March, 1918, to June, 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. While older estimates put the number of killed at 40–50 million people, current estimates are that 50 million to 100 million people worldwide died, possibly more than that taken by the Black Death. This extraordinary toll resulted from the extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.

The disease was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas on March 4, 1918, and Queens, New York, on March 11, 1918. In August, 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France, in West Africa at Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the U.S. at Boston, Massachusetts. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish Flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November, 1918.

Here are two more websites (very interesting!) where you can find more information about the Spanish Flu pandemic in Alaska:

GRASSROOTS SCIENCE: Jesse Lee Home, Alaska and the pandemic of 1919

GRASSROOTS SCIENCE: Alaska and Eskimo data in 1920 British report.

It is nearly impossible to grasp that as many as 100 million people died from this flu. I can’t even imagine an illness so deadly as to wipe out entire villages. But the many grave markers bearing 1920 death dates are proof.

I don’t know why these crosses were in a pile:

In all the years that Lori has lived in Alaska (about as long as I have, if not longer), she has never actually stopped in Nenana for a look around. So of course we did.

Nenana is 56 miles from Fairbanks. It is an Athabascan Native Village and historic community. “Nenana” means ‘a good place to camp between two rivers’, according to one online source.  I found the blog for a man who lives in/near Nenana, if you want to read an account about life there. He doesn’t have a lot of entries in it, but I found it interesting. You can check it out here.

Lori and I drove up and down the streets of Nenana, stopping to check out some of the quirkier things (like the yard full of Volkswagon vehicles), and the neat things - like the fishwheels *parked* on the shores of the frozen Tanana River and the Nenana Railroad Bridge.  I also enjoyed showing her the beautiful church - St Marks Episcopal Mission, which is small and quaint, with a lovely altar adorned with bead-trimmed moose hide.

We stopped to take some photos of the tripod used for the Nenana Ice Classic. The Nenana Ice Classic is a betting lottery which began at Nenana, Alaska, back in 1917 and has been run annually ever since.  Each year the townspeople mount a tripod out on the frozen Tanana River. The tripod is secured firmly to the ice and a rope run from the tripod to a clock mechanism at the shore. When the ice breaks up in late April or early May, the tripod gives way, gets carried only a short distance, finally tripping the clock. The time is then recorded. Last year, the winners shared $303,895!

No drive to Denali Park is complete without a stop for lunch (or dinner) at one of two places: Rose’s Cafe located at mile 249.5 on the Parks Highway, or Monderosa Bar and Grill located at mile 309.  Since Lori had never eaten at Monderosa, that’s where we stopped for burgers on our way home.

This was taken inside the Monderosa (about 4pm, which isn’t a busy time):

Here are our burgers being charbroiled for us. The burgers are HUGE, and I love that they taste like they were cooked on an outside grill. The french fries were great too; piping hot, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. (Now my mouth is watering!)

We made one more stop for a photo: an overlook along the Parks Highway that has a view of Murphy Dome off in the distance:

What a fabulous drive it was!