Stampede Trail
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The Stampede Trail in Alaska was a mining trail blazed in the 1930s by an Alaska miner named Earl Pilgrim, to access his antimony claims on Stampede Creek, above the Clearwater Fork of the Toklat River. Located in Denali Borough, what is now known as Stampede Road begins near the Nenana River at the Alaska Railroad's Anchorage-Fairbanks route in the village of Lignite.
In 1961, Yutan Construction won a contract from the new state of Alaska to upgrade the trail as part of Alaska's Pioneer Road Program, building a road on which trucks could haul ore from the mines year-round to the railroad. The project was halted in 1963 after some fifty miles of roads were built, but no bridges were ever constructed over the several rivers it crossed, and the route was shortly rendered impassable by thawing permafrost and floods. The trail has since been used by backcountry travelers on foot, bicycle, snowmachine and motorcycle.
The trail gained notoriety in 1992 with the death of Christopher McCandless, who had lived in a bus that had been left behind by the Yutan Construction Company during the road building to serve as a backcountry shelter for hunters and trappers. In recent years, the trail has seen a pilgrimage of visitors wanting to see the bus where McCandless perished. The September 2007 release of the film version of Jon Krakauer's book about McCandless, Into the Wild, has revived interest in the trail.
USGA Quads: Healy (D-5 and D-6), Mount McKinley (D-1 and C-1)
