Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 19

Day 19 - Delta Junction

When travel increased between the port of Valdez and the gold fields near Fairbanks, Delta Junction became an important transportation point. Today the Junction is also the end of the Alaska highway and the beginning of the Alaska "Frontier".

The Valdez-to-Fairbanks trail brought travelers to the banks of the Tanana River, where they crossed by ferry. John Hajdukovich, Yugoslavian entrepreneur, envisioned a business opportunity here, and bought the land along with a fur trading post in 1909. The two-story roadhouse, built of logs that were floated down river, became a year-round oasis for hunters, trappers, prospectors and travelers as well as local Athabascans and homesteaders. However, John had many other interests, including the responsibility of US Game Commissioner. Sitting still and running a roadhouse did not appeal to him very much so he simply asked guests to make themselves at home and leave some money on the table. He ran it in this way until 1918, when finally a dependable, hard-working Swede named Rika Wallen was hired to take over.

The site of Rika's Roadhouse and Landing, ten miles northwest of Delta Junction, in Big Delta State Historical Park (907-895-4201; www.rikas.com), near the Tanana River, holds the large log roadhouse, an historic barn, and several other small log buildings. Rika wallen operated this roadhouse from 1918 through the early 1960s. In local historian Judy Ferguson's book Parallel Destinies, she writes that wallen was born Lovisa Erika Jakobson in 1874 on a farm near Örebro, sweden. Rika joined her brother Carl in Minneapolis in 1891, where they changed their names to Wallen. Following his accidental death, she and her sister moved to san Francisco, where Rika cooked for the Hills Brothers coffee family until the 1906 earthquake. In 1916 Rika booked passage for Valdez, in part because she thought Alaska would be like Sweden. Eventually she was employed by John Hadukovich as a cook at his roadhouse on the Tanana River. Wallen worked for a year without pay, and in 1918 Hajdukovich deeded the property for her in payment for back wages. Later she applied for a homestead patent and enlarged the property 320 acres. Wallen was a natural farmer who designed and built the barn with a unique ventialtion system for wintering cows, sheep, oxen, mules, and poultry. The park refers to the roadhouse as "the oldest non-refurbished historic building in Alaska."

We don't know if Rika found her "Sweden" in Alaska, but it is very pretty along the Tanana River where the roadhouse is beautifully located. This was an area that was inhabited by the Athabascan Indians. Moose, caribou and sheep were abundant close to the rivers and in the Granite Mountains. Fur-hearing animals were easily trapped and salmon came up the Delta and Tanana Rivers to spawn. Wild berries grew in the surrounding countryside. Numerous archaeological sites point to habitation by the Indians 10,000 years ago. Some old maps refer to Delta as Buffalo Center. This name was used because of the bison herd which was introduced in 1928 and still ranges free in the area. Close by Rika's there is another roadhouse with another scandinavian connection. Mary Hansen and her late husband, Bert, came by bus from Fairbanks to take over a homestead on the north bank of the Tanana and to operate a roadhouse and guide service. Mrs. Hansen now lives in Wasilla; her daughter, Irene Mead, the first white baby born here, still resides in the Delta area.