Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and America was in WWII. All of a sudden, Alaska became incredibly important since it was close to Japan and could possibly be invaded and taken over. But it was hard to get men, weapons, equipment up there since there was no good road through Canada to Alaska. Gotta have a road and thus was born the Alcan Highway, now called the Alaska Highway.
In the Watson Lake Visitor Center was a nice group of pictures about the building of the road. First, here’s the photographer.
Here he is much younger in his camp with his fire wood at the ready. Check out that cool door into his tent? And, I’m sure that’s snow.
They started the road March 8, 1942 and cut the ribbon on a cold snowy Novermber 20, 9 months later.
First the surveyors, struggled through thick forests and across permafrost plains. Here they are with their pack dogs.
But, construction worked faster than surveyors and sometimes much of the highway was done before the final route had been sellected.
This was a rough road and when they uncovered the permafrost, the land beneath it melted and became a quagmire. It could swallow anything: horses, caterpillars, trucks.
For those working on the road it was a difficult life. Fatigue, hypothermia, accidents - all part of every day life as they set down 8 miles of road 7 days per week. Many workers arrived having lived their entire lives in the South. Now they faced temperatures that could range from 50 below to 30 above. Relentless mosquitos, mud holes that could swallow a builldozer whole, dust and dirt that could clog lungs and engines. When the midnight sun gave them 20 hours of light, they worked double shifts. Living in tents in a different spot every night, no sanitation, often cold food, poor water supplies, conditions were not plush.
African American troops had it worse, they were given shovels instead of the machinery that was given to white troops who had much less experience with it than the African Americans.
‘We lived like nomads… Units of the regiment made one hundred and seventy-four separate moves in 10 months, by train, truck, mud-sled (pictured below), pontoon raft, launch and on foot. One hundred and forty-two pyramidal tent camps were pitched.’ Fred Rust, 18th Engineers, US Army.
Here’s a picture and a quote from Willis Brafe about his experiences: 11/4/42: ’ -10 degrees F this morning. It ceases to be funny any longer and is just plain cold now.’ 11/5/42: ‘-11 degrees F this morning. Ice inside my shoes and my insoles were frozen to the bottom so had to heat them up to get them out. Froze two spots on my face today.’
They stripped the land bare of trees to lay the highway on it then learned about permafrost. Stripping it opened it up to thawing and what a mess that was. Finally, they decided to lay the cut trees and brush down on the land to keep it cold and put the road on top of that. Some of it was called the ‘corderoy’ road. And, in this picture you can see why.
It was temporary, it was difficult to drive, it was slow but supplies got through. It was repaired often and beefed up as much. After the war the Canadians took it over and realized that they would have to rebuild it.
Today they are still rebuilding it, one segment at a time as the permafrost takes ‘care’ of another section. One of the road repair crews that we met in one of our campgrounds told us that sometimes they repair a section that they had repaired the year before. It just depends upon how harsh the weather was the previous winter.
So, as much as I have said about this road now, I take it all back. Building the road was an amazing feat in 1942 crew did and keeping it in repair is an amazing feat now.
This is no big deal.
At least we have some warning now.
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