Duck-pizza crowd clashes with ethos of a bush town

This town, long a gathering site for crusty sourdoughs, rugged mountaineers, and assorted Alaska eccentrics, is now attracting something that really has locals shaking their heads: tourist boutiques.

The town of about 500, a one-time mining and trapping hub about 100 miles north of Anchorage, can seem like a real-life set for television's "Northern Exposure."

Midwinter is livened by the Talkeetna Bachelors Ball and Auction and the Wilderness Women Contest; the mid-summer Moose Dropping Festival celebrates the need to, um, watch where one steps.

Talkeetna's greatest fame comes from its proximity to Mount McKinley, minutes away by air-taxi. Talkeetna is the jumping-off point for most expeditions there and to other mountains in Denali National Park, drawing an international parade of climbers each summer.

Now tourism has increased enough to support a variety of new enterprises.

Pampered visitors can gaze at North America's tallest peak in comfort, thanks to a new luxury hotel.

Tourists can visit the new chocolatier and order a sundried-tomato or smoked-salmon pizza at the deli, before choosing from a variety of new guiding services to show them the beauties of Denali National Park.

There's even traffic control - in the form of lines painted down Main Street to separate pedestrians and the growing fleet of visiting cars, RVs, and tour buses.

The increased traffic through Talkeetna has some positive effects. There is more money and more indoor plumbing, for starters. But the changes make many longtime residents fear that their quirky home may become a tourist trap - doomed, like many Lower-48 mountain resorts, to domination by corporations and rich part-time residents, escalating both the pace and cost of living here.

"Industrial tourism is starting to change Talkeetna," says Roberta Sheldon, a local historian and former community council member. "When you have sheer numbers of people, they can't help but affect the tone of the town. I can see it moving from a charming little town to a tourist town."

The south district ranger station for Denali, once a log cabin where climbers huddled for safety briefings, is now a 5,400-square-foot building; almost 30,000 people are expected to stream through it this year.

Even the historic Fairview Inn, which President Warren Harding patronized when he visited Alaska in 1923 and which for decades served a clientele of bearded locals and sun-bronzed mountaineers, recently tacked on a patio and an outdoor grill.

This summer, a record 1,305 climbers attempted McKinley - double the total in 1980 - and growing numbers are flocking to the less-famous peaks nearby. Landings by ski-equipped sightseeing airplanes on the Ruth Glacier, which spills off of McKinley, rose nearly six-fold from 1991 to 2000, according to the Park Service.

To avoid being trampled under by businesses eager to capitalize on adventure travel, Talkeetna's council is using a federal grant to write a tourism development plan. It is seeking a professional planner to figure out how to control traffic and coordinate with state and federal agencies and businesses.

"I think the entire community is very happy to have this opportunity to have a plan," says council chairman Billy FitzGerald, a pilot who says residents have "mixed feelings" about Talkeetna's changes.

Feelings are mixed, too, about growth controls. There is grumbling about a Park Service plan that could limit climber crowds, airplane landings, and other park uses.

Slapping new controls on climbers, in particular, is seen in some quarters as heresy.

"If I look across a valley and see another guy climbing a route, it does not take away from my experience," says local guide Todd Burleson, sitting in Nagley's Store, where espresso drinks are now sold alongside food staples like beans and Pilot bread. "Why regulate it if it doesn't need it?"

Others say controls may be inevitable because the growth seems to be. "There's more people on the planet, whether it's highway traffic in Anchorage, more tourists in Talkeetna, or cars on the freeway in LA. And there's more people climbing McKinley," says Roger Robinson, a longtime resident and chief mountaineering ranger for Denali National Park.