8/7 - 8/8
Well we made it to Chicken Alaska, 63 miles northeast of Tok. To be honest I wasn’t expecting much as we heard that the roadway out to the hinterland was rough and were only 3 buildings in Chicken. Actually, there are 3 gift shops and one bar of sorts. Our campground was pretty good and for sure we picked the best place to stay in this little town.
Our campground
The real treat was the 1938 gold dredge named the Pedro Dredge. It was originally located in Fairbanks, nearly 275 miles away. Well as it turns out the town of Chicken back in the day was a hot spot for gold mining. Mike the guy that’s owns most the area, staked his gold claim in 1958 purchased the dredge and moved the dredge piece by piece. Quite a task even today. Reportedly, 55,000 oz of gold were mined ($110,000,000 at today’s gold prices) between 1959 and 1967 when the Pedro was finally shut down. It is now a National Historic Site and is the most compete dredge in existence. It really looks like it was shut down just yesterday with workers clothes, shoes and tools right where they left them 56 years ago.
Mark and I toured the guts of this machine. Literally, it’s looks like you could turn the key and start the two massive diesel engines which power massive electric generators. All of the winches, drag lines etc were electric motor powered. Amazingly, it only took 3 men to operate the dredge which ran 24x7 - 12 hour shifts.
More sluice boxes
Boom which held the 70 dredge buckets. 
8/8 - Driving day from Chicken to North Pole Ak. Santa’s unfortunately was on a well deserved vacation, but we did the gift shop tour.
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