Gakona Lodge and Trading Post

Gakona Lodge was built in 1929 on the site of the earlier Doyle's Roadhouse, at the junction of the Copper and Gakona rivers, and is among the oldest continuously operating roadhouses in Interior Alaska. It opens seasonally, roughly from June to Labor Day. Guests and staff have reported footsteps and voices in empty parts of the building and the smell of pipe tobacco drifting through the halls, with one upstairs room named most often. The presence is usually identified as John Paulsen, a former partner in the lodge who smoked a pipe and stayed here regularly. Local papers have carried the story since at least the 1990s.