The REAL Scoop!

Alaska has become popular.  We are definitely seeing more people visiting and wonder how much interest has come from the many popular Alaska “reality” television shows.

I admit that we watch some of them, anxious to see if it is a place where we have been.  Interestingly, two of those reality shows have been set in Chitina and McCarthy, both on the McCarthy Road, on the western edge of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.  The drama in these two shows, Alaska Bush People and Edge of Alaska, has been great.  The Brown family was run out of Chitina, and the people of McCarthy are at odds with the man who would turn it into a tourist trap.  In fact, the angst in McCarthy is portrayed as being so high that we were cautioned by fellow travelers who had watched the show not to venture near.

One of the greatest joys we have during our travels is meeting the local folk, hearing their stories and learning the truth. We met a man that we’ll call Eddie (his name has been changed to protect the innocent), a reliable, elderly, local man who knew all the players.  Eddie gave us the true scoop on these two “reality” programs.  We’re still laughing!

The story line for the Brown family is that they accidently built their homestead on park property, living in it many years before it was burned to the ground by the Feds.  Homeless, the parents and their seven children bought remote property near Chitina to build a new home and start anew.  They struggled to barter for materials and build their new house before winter.  However, the people of Chitina didn’t want the Browns living there nor their film crews.  After an “incident,” filming stopped and the Browns felt too threatened to stay, moving to again start anew on Chicanoff Island.

Eddie’s version is quite different.  He told us flatly that the movie company bought the property for the Brown family show.  In fact a friend of his bought it from the movie company after they were done filming.  Rather than being a remote piece of land, the property was about a quarter mile behind the Grizzly Pizza restaurant.  The episode where the Brown boys meet the local girls was really played by several Valdez waitresses that were brought in, each hoping to make a few extra dollars.  The episode where the boys take down a green house for an elderly lady?  The movie producer paid the lady to have the boys dismantle it.  Eddie said that the movie company built the Brown’s house, but to make it look authentic, they had the Brown boys hammer, saw, and hoist beams and trusses.  When filming was done, the movie company tore the house down.  From the beginning, production in Chitina was only to be one season before moving on to another location.

The Edge of Alaska story, based in McCarthy, was even more interesting.  The story line got ugly last season when the owner of most of the town decided to put in power lines and a stoplight.  He took his backhoe and dug up the main street to lay the line.  One of the townspeople was so upset that when the backhoe was unattended, he took it upon himself to use the backhoe to refill all the trenches again with dirt. 

Again, Eddie chuckles and reveals the truth.  Those power lines were put in nine years ago.  As we learned during our visit to McCarthy, they are powered by a community generator that sits right behind the main street.  The man who refilled the trenches, teaches his son to shoot, and runs around like a renegade is actually an anti-gun activist.  Eddie recently ran into the pilot of the Edge of Alaska reality show in a hardware store, commenting on what a celebrity he has become.  The man told Eddie that he did it to make some of “that TV money.”

And the old codger who lives up in the mountains and is so isolated that he needs townspeople to bring him his medicine?  Well, he actually has a jeep and drives it to town nearly every day.  He doesn’t stay up on the mountain all winter but lives in his second home in Palmer.  As Eddie tells us, “It’s all made up.”

Visiting McCarthy today certainly supported Eddie’s claim.  The town only has about 25 full-time residents.  During the summer, the town of McCarthy swells to 100-150 folks, all there to support the tourist industry for the old Kennicott copper mine, lodge, and the national park. 

Except for the footbridge (also usable by one-person ATVs), McCarthy has a privately owned toll bridge into the town which the museum curator tells us that even most of the residence don’t use because the toll is so high.  Instead folks get around on their ATVs.  The squabble over the stoplight on the reality show would hardly make sense, especially considering the small number of vehicles on McCarthy’s roads.

It certainly appears that “reality” television isn’t reality at all anymore.  Eddie tells us that the movie people tell folks what to say, and they say it.  Quite frankly, we believe him. 

So today we fell like gullible “mullets,” as a dear loved one use to call them.  Makes you wonder if anything on television is honest anymore… particularly “reality” TV.

We came away from both Chitina and McCarthy having met some wonderful, friendly folks and we encourage you to visit both if you’re ever up this way.