Highways and Hotels: A look at development at Crabbie's Crossing

By Kiana Carlson, Museum Technician
Published September 2022

If you’ve travelled to Denali National Park this summer, you’ve likely encountered construction just south of the park entrance around mile 231 of the Parks Highway. Mile 231, often referred to as Crabbie’s Crossing, has two major resorts and is a popular starting point for rafters and hikers, and is getting a major face lift with the addition of turning lanes and other enhancements. This has always been a popular area with people; including long before the park existed.

The area surrounding Crabbie’s Crossing including the Nenana River, the Triple Lakes trail, and the Yanert Fork are the traditional homelands of the Ahtna and Lower Tanana peoples. Like today, this area was a travel corridor for thousands of years and was used extensively by the Western Band of Ahtna (the Hwtsaay Hwt'aene) who would travel north from the Susitna River along the Yanert Fork, which is called Tl’ahwdicaaxi Caek’e (mouth of valuable headwater). They would also travel along the Nenana River, which in Ahtna is called Ninena’ (moving nomadically stream), and in Lower Tanana is called Ninano’ (stopping while migrating stream). They would come to the area to hunt big game like caribou, as well as travel here to trade with other groups in the region sometimes following a path that the modern-day Triple Lakes trail resembles called Tsenesdghaas Na’ Tene (rough rock stream trail).

Construction of the new bridge in 1954.

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Historically, Park visitors accessed the park using the Alaska Railroad as there was no road access until the 1950’s when the Denali Highway was constructed. The current construction at Crabbie’s Crossing echoes that of 1954 when construction of a new bridge over the Nenana River, then known as the Yanert Crossing, took place and was completed in October of the same year. It was the third bridge constructed over this crossing as the first two bridges had both previously been damaged by ice¹. The Denali Highway was officially opened to general traffic on August 5th, 1957 and connected the Park to the rest of Alaska. Six cars drove into the park that day, and more than 240 visitors drove to the park by the end of the month. Following the opening of the Denali Highway, the number of visitors to the park more than doubled between the 1957 and 1958 seasons, with 10,700 visitors in 1957 and 25,900 in 1958.

With this new way to access the park and an increase of people driving to the park, roadside businesses were constructed to cater to this new influx of visitors. The land immediately south of the Yanert Crossing was first homesteaded by Forest Hills, Inc in 1957² and then by Gary Crabb in 1959. In 1967, Gary and his wife Linda opened Toklat Village to accommodate the growing number of visitors entering the park via motor vehicle as well as providing a place to stay for the guests still arriving on train. The Crabb’s changed the name of their property from Toklat Village to Mount McKinley Village³ shortly after. For the first couple of seasons there was only a campground, a restaurant, and a Chevron gas station. By 1969, the Crabb’s had added mobile motel units for their guests to stay in.

Mount McKinley Village in 1974.

Photo courtesy of Mindi Crabb

The number of visitors to the area increased a few years later when the Parks Highway was completed in 1971. With this increase of visitors, Mount McKinley Village upgraded its operation to include a full-service hotel, a coffee shop, a cocktail lounge, a gift shop, and even a conference space. The Crabb family operated Mount McKinley Village for two decades⁴, and it was in this time that the Yanert Crossing became known as Crabbie’s Crossing. In 1989, there was a formal dedication making Crabbie’s Crossing the official name of the bridge. Linda Crabb sold Mount McKinley Village in 1987 to ARA (later called Aramark), a major service provider in the Denali area, who continue to operate the hotel now named Denali Park Village.

Dedication ceremony for Crabbie’s Crossing in 1989.

Photo courtesy of Mindi Crabb

Mount McKinley Village sign (circa 1969).

Photo courtesy of Mindi Crabb

The Crabb’s were not alone in creating accommodations right outside of the park entrance. Due to the ease of travel from the newly constructed highways and as the number of visitors increased, more hotels began popping up around the vicinity of the park entrance. Right across the highway from the Crabb homestead on the south side of the road, Jack Reisland opened an RV park in 1968 on his homestead that grew into the Grizzly Bear Resort, which is still owned and operated by the Reisland family. Seven and a half miles north of Crabbie’s Crossing and just north of the park entrance in the Nenana Canyon, several people acquired land which would soon become home to a slew of hotels, restaurants, shops, and other businesses known to many as “Glitter Gulch.”

Highway and hotel construction go hand in hand with the growing number of visitors to Denali. There has been, and will likely continue to be, further improvements and enhancements to both the establishments and the roads that get us to them.

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^{1 There has been a total of five bridges at this crossing with the fifth and current bridge being built in 1973.
2 A drive-in was operated for a single season in 1962 on the land homesteaded by Forest Hills, Inc.
3 The community south of Crabbie’s Crossing is named McKinley Village.
4 Garry and Linda Crabb also owned and operated the North Face Lodge in Kantishna from 1973 to 1987.}