Today Delta Junction is the end-of-the-highway town, proud of its Milepost 1422, its free-roaming bison herd, its historic roadhouses, and its place in the Tanana Valley under the Alaska Range. Its story runs from the Athabascan valley and the 1904 telegraph station through the roadhouse-trail years, the 1920s buffalo experiment, and the 1942 highway that gave the town its name and its fame. Our Delta Junction designs gather that identity into wearable form — the milepost, the bison, the bear, the Last Frontier. Delta Junction — the end of the Alaska Highway, Milepost 1422.
This has always been a crossroads. The Tanana River Valley is Athabascan homeland, and the route through it became the Valdez-to-Fairbanks Trail in the early 1900s, carrying gold-seekers and freight between the coast and the Interior. A telegraph station went up in 1904; roadhouses followed to feed and shelter the travelers, including Sullivan Roadhouse in 1905 and Rika's Roadhouse around 1909, the latter run for decades by the Swedish immigrant Rika Wallen and now the centerpiece of Big Delta State Historical Park. In the 1920s the government chose the Delta country for a buffalo-importation experiment, trucking plains bison up from Montana — and the free-roaming herd stuck, giving the place its first name: Buffalo Center.
Why People Visit Delta Junction Alaska
- Get your photo and certificate at the End of the Alaska Highway, Milepost 1422, at the Triangle.
- Visit Big Delta State Historical Park and Rika's Roadhouse (1909) on the Tanana River.
- Tour Sullivan Roadhouse, among the oldest in Interior Alaska, by the visitor center.
- Watch for the free-roaming Delta bison herd on the Delta Bison Range.
- Fish and camp at Quartz Lake, and catch the Deltana Fair in late July.
