Anchorage Daily News

POPULATION: 428 (2007)

LOCATION: Between mile 107 and 133 of the George Parks Highway about 17 miles north of the junction with the Talkeetna Spur Road.

DESCRIPTION: A community that has developed from homesteading through the 1960s and from recent new subdivisions. Recreation, hunting, snowmobiling and dog mushing are popular, while subsistence activities also an integral part of the lifestyle. Nearly half of the 361 homes are used only seasonally.

HISTORY: The area is Dena'ina Athabascan Indian territory. Once gold was discovered on Cache Creek in 1906, prospectors traveled up the Susitna River to Susitna Station and overland past Trapper Creek to Cache Creek. In 1920, the Alaska Road Commission started construction of a wagon road to Cache Creek from Talkeetna. Miners built the Petersville Road in the 1920s, and federal homesteading began in 1948. Trapper Creek is a local name, first reported in 1958 by the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1959, the "Fifty-Niners," a group of settlers from Detroit, Mich., moved to Talkeetna and then to Trapper Creek to find homesteads. They lived in trailers and tents before building log cabins. The Parks Highway opened as far as Trapper Creek in 1967 and was completed in 1971.

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