Chickaloon Bunkhouse

Chickaloon Bunkhouse. . , In 1899 the U.S. Army documented the coal findings at Chickaloon and in 1916 the area was set aside by the United States Secretary of the Interior as a designated coal-mining area. A town sprang up, the town of Chickaloon, peopled with miners, Navy personnel, and Natives of the Ahtna Athapaskan Tribe. By 1918, construction completed at Chickaloon included 28 frame and log buildings. One of the buildings was the Chickaloon Bunkhouse. Katie Wade, a Native inhabitant of the area, born in Chickaloon in 1922, recalls her mother's description:, "Mama said there was a hospital there, school, all kinds of buildings... They had a townsite where Navy personnel lived...they said the government owned ones on top of the hill and that's where this little one (the Bunkhouse) was.", The boom at Chickaloon, however, was not to last. In 1922 it was decided the coal was not good enough quality to be used in naval vessels and the Navy ordered the shutdown of the Chickaloon mine. And so in 1933 the buildings were dismantled and moved, the railroad tracks were torn up and the population declined. The Chickaloon Bunkhouse was one of the buildings moved. As Katie recalls: "Seemed to me like they tore it all down, board by board. My dad hauled it down with his horses and wagons, down to the bottom of the hill where the train was... They said they were going to set them up along the railroad tracks and in Anchorage on Government Hill... There were two of them at Moose Creek. There was another building that was bigger than this one...That was the mess hall and this one was the bunkhouse.", The bunkhouse was used by both the railroad section crews and the highway road crews. From 8 to 14 men would live in it at ony one time. In the winter it was heated with coal in a pot-bellied stove. About 1954 or 55, Katie Wade, whose father, husband, brother-in-law and uncle had all lived in the bunkhouse while it was at Moose Creek, purchased the building from the railroad. It was dragged up the hill by a caterpillar to her property which is situated just above the mouth of Moose Creek. There again it housed various members of Katie's family., In the spring of 1984, Katie sold the house to an unidentified young man who in turn sold the house to Eileen Haines of Sutton. Eileen donated the bunkhouse to the Alpine Historical Society, and in late summer of '84 it was moved it to its final resting place on the grounds of the Alpine Heritage and Cultural Center. Now it has been rennovated [sic] and is once again occupied, perhaps not by section crews or Alaskan families but with local residents and visitors learning about Alaska's history.