Rika Wallen and people like her couldn’t keep motorized vehicles and airplanes from killing off most of the roadhouses along the Richardson Highway. They could, though, save a single roadhouse by improving it and knowing how to run it. Big Delta where travelers ferried across the Tanana River on their way to Fairbanks hosted two of the best and most famous. Tonite, the story of Rika Wallen and her roadhouse.
In Sweden the Wallen’s named their new baby girl, Erika. As a young adult, Erika followed her brother, Carl, to the United States. She lived and worked on his farm for a while but, still restless, she moved to San Francisco. There she took a job cooking for the fabulously wealthy Hills Brothers Coffee family. An affectionate estate staff shortened her name to Rika, and Rika she would remain.
In 1906 a monster earthquake, certainly the most famous in the United States, levelled San Francisco. Her employer moved and Rika tried to get her life going again, but the earthquake had destroyed her prospects along with the city. She heard that the gold camps scattered through Alaska offered plenty of work and she thought Alaska might be like the home in Sweden that she fondly remembered.
In 1916, Rika booked passage for Valdez, Alaska..
If Alaska offered gold, it also offered copper—especially in the vicinity of Valdez. Rika made her way up to the Kennecott Copper mine; cooked there for the crew. But oncoming winter stopped Kennecott Copper activity in October.
Rika headed up the Richardson Highway toward Fairbanks, but she didn’t make it that far. Alaska winter took cold to a whole new level, and after a miserable four days she vowed to winter at the next roadhouse. Yost’s Roadhouse needed a cook so there Rika stayed—for seven long, dark months.
Finally, spring…
In June she made her way on north to Fairbanks and there she met John Hajdukovich. John had just opened a roadhouse at Big Delta, but he wanted to go prospecting. He needed someone to tend the roadhouse for the winter. Rika had just endured an Alaska winter along the Richardson, so it took John a while to talk her into his proposition, but she finally agreed to try one winter.
John went prospecting and Rika took over the roadhouse.
News of her cooking ability quickly spread among the local prospectors and trappers—she shot rabbits and turned them into a thoroughly delectable stew. She hired Butch Stock to cut her winter’s wood and through the winter Butch and other local bachelors brought In Moose that she cooked and served to travelers passing through.
At the end of a year, John had a problem. Prospecting hadn’t worked out really well and he had no money to pay Rika’s wages. But John also had a solution. He didn’t really want to run a roadhouse. And Rika did. John just gave her the place.
Rika became an institution in Big Delta and ran her roadhouse there for the rest of her life.
Judy Ferguson helped preserve the memory of both Rika and John in her book Parallel Destinies, and Alaska made Rika’s roadhouse an Alaska State Park.