There's Only One Chicken in Alaska

Drawn from Donald Orth's 1967 Dictionary of Alaska Place Names:

Mishap Creek, aka Big Loss Creek, is Unimak Island stream named for a lighthouse keeper who stripped naked to cross the water, then tried to throw his clothes to the other side, only to watch helplessly as they landed downstream and disappeared.

There's Chicken, an old mining town established during the Klondike Gold Rush. A detailed history of the name is not in Orth's dictionary, but according to oft-told lore, miners wanted to call the community Ptarmigan after a bird common to the area, but no one knew how to spell it. So they settled on Chicken, since miners also called ptarmigans "tundra chickens."

Atlasta Creek was inspired by a remark uttered by the wife of the owner of a nearby roadhouse after the first building was completed: "At last a house."

Lost Temper Creek, an Arctic Slope stream, was named over a "camp incident." [Link]

[via Neatorama]

The Last of Her People, So to Speak

Marie Smith-Jones was the last native speaker of the Eyak language. She died Monday at her home in Anchorage, Alaska.

Eyak is one of 20 languages spoken in Alaska, many of which are thought to be fading out of existence. Mrs Smith-Jones was determined that the Eyak language would not die with her, and devoted much of her later life to this cause.

Working with linguists at the Alaska Native Languages Centre she compiled an Eyak dictionary and grammar guide. Michael Krauss, professor emeritus at the centre, said: "She understood as only someone in her position could, what it meant to be the last of her kind. And she was very much alone as the last speaker of Eyak.

In an interview in 2005, Mrs Smith-Jones gave her Eyak name, Udach' Kuqax*a'a'ch, which she translated as "a sound that calls people from afar". [Link]