The town of Chicken was named during the early days of developing Alaskan roadmaps. When a traveling cartographer asked the miners who had flocked to the town for gold what its name was, they chose Ptarmigan, opting to name their little hub after the type of bird they frequently spotted in the area.
But they soon ran into a problem—no one could actually agree on how to spell “ptarmigan.” So as not to ruffle the feathers of any future map readers with a fowl spelling error, the residents decided to call the town “Chicken” instead because the two birds look a bit similar and the word was easy to spell.
