Nenana. This town got its name from the same Indian word ‘Nenana,’ which means, ‘a beautiful place to stop between rivers.’ Nenana has a few hundred residents, but Alaskans from Ketchikan to Barrow know it for its namesake game of chance-the Nenana Ice Classic. Each winter, a wooden tripod is placed on the frozen Nenana River, which runs right past the town, and participants pay $2 to record their best guess as to when the ice will break each spring. Alaska does not have a lottery, so the Nenana Ice Classic is as close as you can get, and the pot usually exceeds about $300,000.
Nenana is also famous as the place where President Warren G. Harding stepped on the last gold spike in the Alaska Railroad in 1923, marking its completion. Nenana was formally established as a railroad construction camp in 1916; surveyors of the Seward to Fairbanks rail line originally created the Nenana Ice Classic.
