Places to Go
Haunted Igloo City
CANTWELL - This abandoned roadside hotel lies near the Denali National Park and Preserve on the Parks Highway. A four-story concrete building, it never opened to customers. This remote area is dark and empty, except for the times when travelers have reported seeing the lights on in the long empty building, and seeing the silhouette of a woman standing in the windows of the hotel.
Alaska’s two largest cities on the Parks Highway. Cantwell is named after Lieutenant J. C. Cantwell, military explorer and commander of the revenue steamer Corwin on the Yukon River, 1898-1900. Prior to the settlement, the only inhabitants of the Cantwell area were nomadic Tanana Indians and Athabascan Native Alaskans who hunted and fished. In their language they named Cantwell Intended to one day Yede’teni’na. The serve as a hotel, Igloo town began as a City was never actuflag stop on the ally completed. It was Alaska Railroad. constructed someThis flagstop time in the 1970s, but supplied the could not meet the Valdez Creek building codes of the mining area, time. While it might which had the be easier to meet some “This strange and mysteriname “Denali” of those codes today, too for the Valdez ous hotel was never opened to much of the hotel has Creek comdeteriorated over the munity. Many overnight customers.” years to make renovation Indians from - Wikipedia worthwhile. Not for lack the village of of trying, though. Ever Tyone came to since its construction, the building has gone through work at Valdez Creek and later lived out their lives in many owners, none of whom could get it up to par. The the Cantwell area. Many Tyones are buried in the old four-story concrete structure can be seen by airplanes Cantwell graveyard, next to the railroad tracks. Oley at 30,000 feet it is so large. But the interior was never Nicklie, a Native Alaskan, sought work with the railfinished. We know this because the igloo is no longer road after fur prices dropped. He and his two brothers padlocked as it once was—with so many parts starting then founded part of the settlement. Cantwell is 20 to fall apart, it’s impossible to keep curious passersby miles away from the abandoned igloo hotel. from wandering in to explore—and many have made their way inside.
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It’s primary significance today is that it mark the halfway point between Fairbanks and Anchorage, -16- | WEEKENDEREXTENDED.COM ~ October, 2021
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