Bird’s Eye View: Eagle, Alaska

Eagle, Alaska – Eagle is full of both old and new and sometimes it’s hard to tell where ends meet.  A walk down Amundsen Street takes you past the old  schoolhouse, built in the early 1900′s. Further down the road, a brand new Toyota, recently purchased in Fairbanks, sits parked in front of a leaning, moss covered log cabin.  Head straight for another two blocks to find yourself on Front Street, overlooking the Yukon River, which has flowed past the tiny town for thousands of years.  A full (and slow) 360 degree turn provides sites of the old courthouse and the old well house, with a mountain bike parked in front.  There’s an old red telephone booth – home to Eagle’s first phone installed in the 1980′s – next to the old Power company building.  A pickup truck rumbles by on the dirt road, as a tanker truck passes in the opposite direction, spraying the road to keep the dust down.  John Borg has lived in Eagle for nearly four decades.  He is in his 70′s, but he nearly bounds up the stairs of the historic courthouse, for the  9 am tour.  A small child passes on a bright blue bicycle.  It’s an amalgamation of  old and new, young and weathered.  Eagle is a town, changing and remaining the same all at once.

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