Her parents were pioneers, building a lodge at Mile 110 Glenn Highway in 1947, and Pam Meekin holds the memories of growing up on the Glenn.

Meekin has mementos, notes and photos of a time few remember, in part because so few lived in that place at the time. She wants to share her memories with others, before it's too late, before nothing exists of the old life along the road as reminders of what went before.

Wednesday afternoon, Meekin spoke to the Glenn Highway Scenic Byways Association board at the Mat-Su Visitors Center.

There were several roadhouses and lodges on the highway when Meekin was growing up, but few of them housed children.

“Most of the lodges were started by guides,” she said. “They liked to hunt and fish, so they started guiding. Gunsight, Eureka and Tahneta became little communities around the roadhouses.”

 

The guides used horses then, letting them free-range in the offseason. And there was a sense of competition among them as businesses.

“One of my favorite memories is of the bells on the horses when I was about 6 years old,” Meekin said. “They'd get all mixed up with each other and we almost had shootouts when we had to determine whose horse was whose.”

Meekin worked hard as the oldest of three children raised at Meekin's Log Cabin Camp. She cooked, cleaned and served meals. She remembered standing on a wood crate when she first started washing dishes.

Her father was a taskmaster, she said, which was good for instilling a strong work ethic in his children. But as a teen, Meekin rebelled.

“I got feisty,” she said. “I'd go to work at the other places until dad asked me to come home. I worked at Sheep Mountain until he came in and said, ‘OK, this time you can keep your tips.'”