The “Highway” swung around a curve and into the valley. A tiny town, actually three business establishments and a post office, nestle close to the creek. A gold mining creek of course. The best stop: Beautiful Downtown Chicken. A slab wood sided, false fronted, strip mall that houses an Emporium (gift and souvenir shop), a Saloon, and a Café. The floors sag and bow so much I could barely walk in a straight line. The proprietor, Susan, waited on us everywhere. She is the baker too. The blueberry and apple pie are both fabulous. The gift shop has a great selection of fun stuff as well as the usual T-shirts and candy bars. Oh, there are actually live chickens in the coop between the café and the saloon. To further assure its position as a one on a kind place; the Poop Coop (the strip mall public outhouse) is both functional and quite entertaining. This is a pit toilet only town.

A close second: The giant chicken sculpture fashioned from old school lockers then trucked out here from Homer, about 615 miles. The local version of the signpost forest includes names of all sorts of other fowl namesakes like: Chicken Gizzard KY, Suck Egg Hollow TN, Chickaboggalla Australia, Yolk Spring AZ. Clever, huh? Chicken Post office. I am not positive that this is the smallest we have seen but it is definitely one of the most quaint. Mail leaves Tuesdays and Fridays. We stopped by on Tuesday so I actually got to meet the post mistress. Her kids were having a great time playing house and dusting the PO front porch with willow branches. I’m not sure one could get smaller-town USA. Abandoned mining equipment sits everywhere. A huge dredge is sort of a centerpiece of town. We could have staked a couple hour claim and panned for gold…they still find enough in the area to keep people working it. We have resisted the urge so far but may try our hand at it before we get out of gold country all together.