The Railroad That Made a Town
Near Talkeetna, Alaska
Talkeetna owes its very existence to a decision made in Washington. In nineteen fourteen President Woodrow Wilson signed the law authorizing the federal government to build a railroad from the port of Seward to the interior city of Fairbanks. Two years later, in nineteen sixteen, the Alaska Engineering Commission selected this flat riverside bench as a construction district headquarters.
It was a logical choice, sitting where three rivers meet, with river access for bringing in supplies. The effect was immediate. A rough tent town filled with railroad laborers, teamsters, and prospectors, and the population swelled quickly.
Log stores, a roadhouse, and cabins went up along what is now Main Street. When the railroad was finished in the early nineteen twenties, most of the workers scattered to the next job. But Talkeetna did not disappear.
Miners working the nearby creeks made it their supply town, and the railroad kept a station here. To this day the Alaska Railroad still stops in Talkeetna, and for many visitors the train, not the highway, is how they arrive.
