Chicken, Alaska is probably the last place you’d want to live if you’re a real estate agent. With a population of just 60 in the summer and five in the winter, there aren’t many homes to buy and sell.
And forget commercial property. The downtown, if you can call it that, has four shops and a gas station and they’re all owned by one woman, Susan Wiren, a Philadelphia native who has been operating these remnants of old frontier Alaska for the past 27 years.
A former book store manager in New Jersey, Wiren followed her “adventurer” boyfriend to Alaska 28 years ago and never looked back. While he dredged for gold, she looked after two children and when some vacant shops came up for sale, she took a risk and purchased them from the bank.
Susan Wiren (Photo by Diane Slawych)
The boyfriend is long gone, but Wiren now has a thriving business with seven employees. “We try to find fun-loving, silly people,” she says, admitting downtown resembles a “B-grade, surrealistic movie.” Helping her run the operation is her son John, her friend Cindy and her daughter, and a new hire from Oklahoma, plus several repeat employees. Wiren’s mutt Daisy May and a few pet chickens watch from the sidelines.
The weathered-looking storefronts set amidst a stark landscape include a souvenir emporium with t-shirts that read: “I got laid in Chicken, Alaska” or “Cluck-U.” At the Chicken Creek Saloon, thousands of baseball caps, left behind by passing visitors, hang from the ceiling. Countless business cards, license plates and other paraphernalia cover the walls near the jukebox, the pool table and around the bar. Outside is a giant tire. “Occasionally people get in and we roll them to the airport,” she says. “I’ve done it. It’s horrible, but people think it’s funny.”
The café has a diverse menu, including vegan and gluten-free dishes, and of course chicken. There’s barbecue chicken, chicken pot pie, grilled chicken breast, chicken salad sandwich, chicken parmesan sandwich, Caesar salad with chicken and one of the house specialties, chicken soup.
The town’s unconventional name is believed to have originated with area gold miners in the 1800s, who wanted to call their camp Ptarmigan – after a grouse that was abundant in the area. But unsure of its spelling, they settled on Chicken instead.
Today, Chicken, located in southeast Alaska, is still fairly remote. The roads aren’t plowed in the winter, so Wiren’s shops are only open from about May to September.
The closest big town is Tok, Alaska (population 3,500) which is 128 km away. From Canada it’s 174 km from Dawson City, Yukon.
You can’t expect modern conveniences here. Mail arrives by plane Tuesdays and Fridays. A generator provides electricity and there’s no central plumbing (to collect water from the local river and have it filtered and chlorinated, Wiren had to become a federally certified public water system operator). Telephone land lines and cell phones are not an option. Instead Wiren has two satellite dishes to connect to the Internet, and while it’s not cheap, it allows her to Skype with friends and customers and check email.
In recent years she added two rental cabins, one with a “great view,” that is often rented by local Alaskans. “Some people come to Chicken as a destination,” says Wiren. “They sit on the deck, enjoy the view and have a nice dinner. There’s a fire pit, so they can relax and have a nice weekend.”
Wiren expects she’ll put the businesses up for sale in a few years time. “It’ll take a while to sell because it takes an unusual person to operate,” she says. “You have to be able to talk to people and to run a business in a very efficient way because operating costs are so high. And you have to be a good cook.”
But for now Wiren, who just turned 60, seems content to continue welcoming visitors to her quirky little Alaskan town. “It’s my passion,” she says.
Diane Slawych is a contributing writer for REM.
