Anchorage Daily News

POPULATION: 86 (2007)

LOCATION: Between Nabesna River and Skate Lake, on a nine-mile spur road off the Alaskan Highway, two miles north of the airport, 42 miles from the Canadian border.

DESCRIPTION: A traditional Upper Tanana Athabascan community and one of three dispersed settlements comprising Northway (the others are Northway, at the airport, and Northway Junction, Mile 1264). More than 95 percent of the population is wholly or partly Alaska Native, and traditions such as dancing, crafts, hunting and trapping continue today. The locally operated school, tribal office, clinic and other services provide the only jobs. Subsistence activities underlie the lifestyle and provide most food sources -- moose, rabbit, ptarmigan, ducks, geese, whitefish and berries. Some residents travel to the Copper River for salmon. Families trap and sell furs and produce birch-bark baskets, moccasins, mukluks, mittens, hats and beadwork accessories.

HISTORY: The area around Northway was first used by semi-nomadic Athabascans who pursued seasonal subsistence activities in the vicinity of Scottie and Gardiner creeks and the Chisana, Nabesna and Tanana rivers. Their first contacts with white people probably occurred in the late 1880s during trips to trading posts along the Yukon. White traders entered the region as early as 1912, and by the '20s had established trading posts at Gardiner Creek and along the Nabesna River. Nabesna, the first settlement in the area, was located across the river from the site now occupied by Northway Village; flooding led to its abandonment in the 1940s. Living at the new site, Native workers were able to work on the Alaska Highway and at the Northway airfield during World War II. A post office was established in 1941. In 1942, the name of the village was changed to Northway to honor the village chief, T'aiy Ta', who had adopted the name Northway from a riverboat captain who traveled the Tanana and Nabesna rivers in the early 1900s. Chief Walter Northway was thought to be 117 years old at the time of his death in 1993.

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