It's one thing to remove your own snow, although there are times when a snowblade on a pickup truck will not do the job. You need an industrial strength plow and a couple of front-end loaders. We even experience this in the more moderate climate of Pennsylvania on the average of once or twice a winter; how much more often must this happen in Alaska? I'll bet they put in an urgent request to the state, and I'm sure they have to wait their turn, unlike municipalities that have their own equipment.

They also haven't got a bank or a hospital, a couple of institutions that look for infrastructure before they build. Does the spirit of do-it-yourself also extend to lending each other money for major purchases and removing each other's appendices? I doubt it. They have to go to larger municipalities for those services and others, underwritten by people who can pay for the infrastructure that supports them.

Praising the lack of infrastructure is romantic, but not practical. If it were practical, there would be no cities in the American West. It would have stayed the loner's paradise that drew the cowboys in the first place.