About Talkeetna, Alaska

[Music] so let me tell you a little bit about my hometown tala Alaska tala is a funky little village just off the Park Highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks located where three Mighty Rivers come together the word tala actually means where the rivers join in the native language of the denina tribe here the tala river and the chela river meet up with the Susa River and together they all become the Big susitna River the Chamber of Commerce calls tala the gateway to denelli because of its proximity to the mountain but believe me it has other nicknames as well it's a famous and somewhat Infamous little [Music] town while it is indeed the gateway to Denali for the masses of tourists and mountain climbers who flock here in droves every summer for me and my family arriving here in 1970 tala was the gateway to our new life on a little Lake in the wilderness of the tracks and it was an entirely different town back then Main Street was unpaved and muddy or snowy with just a handful of businesses and homes along it so yeah it looked pretty much like [Music] this if anyone had told us that someday it would be like Main Street Disneyland craw ING with dazed tourists throwing money at dozens of venues packed into every possible space like mertile sardines we never would have believed it we couldn't have even begun to imagine its transformation into the tourist and mountaineering hotspot it would eventually become why would anybody want to come here we would have said some of the businesses that are still recognizable in providing the same basic services in today's tala are nages which opened in 1917 the fair viiew Inn built in 1923 and still going strong after a 100 Years of Deery The Roadhouse built in 1917 the tala Inn also known as the Tepe and the Swiss Alaska Inn which was called the rainbow Inn back then there are also a number of buildings that still exist but have morphed into other businesses there used to be a gas station in the middle of town which is now a huge booming business bus called Denali Brewing Company and next door to that there was tala Grocery and that is now the famous mountain high Pizza [Music] Pie what used to be the schoolhouse that opened in 1936 is now the museum The Hanger just off Main Street that used to house Don Sheldon's planes is now the Sheldon Community Arts [Music] [Music] hanger this Runway here the village air strip was created in 1938 and shortly after that they built the state airport across the tracks and the era of aviation in tala took off see what I did there oh maybe we get to see it take off how that [Music] Ting in 1951 a new easier route up the West flank of Denali was pioneered which allowed climbers the advantage of flying out from Tal up to the kahiltna glacier at the base of the mountain and climbing from there by the early '70s the climbers were routinely choosing this option and the local Bush Pilots were getting very busy and even a little famous we were lucky enough to know and fly with two of the finest Don Sheldon and Cliff Hudson which brings us to the tala cemetery where a lot of those climbers and a few of those Pilots are now this right across from the what you would call an airport is the tala cemetery let's take a little cruise through here I always come by and pay respects to some of our tala people that are here now people that I knew from the time I was six lots of love lots of flowers they maintain this Cemetery really nicely now they didn't used to but uh they do now notably here lies Cliff Hudson and his son Jay and those are people that we knew well Cliff was a quite a famous Bush pilot up here and you can see that they're buried side by side Jay actually preceded cliff in death dying of cancer in 2009 and then uh Cliff died a year later of dementia anyway I have many fond memories of Cliff flying us out to the lake he was quite a character and a really good good soul and then one of the other really interesting things in this graveyard in this Cemetery I will show you every year mountain climbers perish on the mountain and so they have this tribute over here the Mount McKinley climbers Memorial of course it's so old they still call it McKinley they have not changed this plaque here and some of them are in Japanese because a lot of the clim come from Japan now this guy in particular was a local favorite and his nickname was mugs and my sister actually uh has some interesting ghost stories involving mugs and we'll get into that later on in the summer when we talk about her book ghosts of tala and uh maybe she'll take us on a ghost walk but yeah mugs has made his presence known since his passing in [Music] 1992 uh here is the memorial stone to the memory of ran and he was a very very famous mountain climber and he ended up dying on Mount Everest uh in 1979 and over here this this is a like a wall of the years and listing all the people who died on Denali well you can see here in '92 oh that's the year that mugs died actually a lot of people died on the mountain that year uh they had some horrific storms and just a lot of tragic circumstances so you might ask what brought settlers to this area area in the first place well the answer is a pretty common story first it was gold then it was The Rail Road the years Roll by and the seasons come and go but the basic cycles of life here repeat Faithfully as expected Every Spring the snow melts away and the town fills up like an endless festival and then every fall just like magic the tourists and the climbers disappear the crazy bustling summer Fades into another dark quiet winter and the locals take a deep breath and settle back into their normal routines and through it all life and Kina hums along to the flow of the rivers the trains the Plains and the character and the vibrancy of the people who make this small town a very special place on this planet my hometown Tela Alaska when the day is done let's have some fun we still got one more stop meet me tonight at the fair view in when the Weeping Willies play I'll See You In The Crowd if the band don't play too loud we'll dance [Music] [Music] night here

Channel: Back to Alaska: SEASON 3 COMING SOON!!!

Views: 4,847

Keywords: Alaska, off grid, wilderness, cabin, skoolie, cat, musicians, adventure, sustainable, lifestyle, walltent, Denall, Bushpilots, Don Sheldon, Cliff Hudson

Id: zQF_ZERCHc0

Length: 9min 31sec (571 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 31 2023