Cairns near Nisutlin Bay mark the final resting places for two men who came to the Highway and never left.
Link to another story “Bonner and Bess and the Memorial Cairns”
James Miller, who drove a tractor trailer truck up and down the Alaska Highway back when it was still dirt and gravel commented on one of my stories one night. “Somewhere along the Alaska Highway a soldier died and was buried along the road and every time I drove by that [cairn] I thought,” what a lonely place to spend eternity.
Mr. Miller wondered whether I knew anything about the soldier the cairn memorializes and what had happened to him.
Good friends in the Teslin Historical Society have maintained that Cairn for nearly eighty years. They told us it marked the final resting place of Max Richardson of the 340th Engineers. Max died in a wrecked truck right at that spot.
But they also told us of a second cairn not far from there. Since it doesn’t stand at the edge of the Highway not many people know it’s there, but the historical society maintains that one too, and one of their members told us how to find it.
A few miles south and east of the Bay Bridge, one turns left on a brushy two-track road into the woods. Rocking and bouncing over the two-track for a couple of miles brings you to a tiny lake and on its shore stands the second cairn. This one memorializes William Whitfield of the 340th.
A 340th Regiment morning report notes William’s death and the location, but it gives no details. For her book Pioneer Road, though, Donna Blasor-Bernardt interviewed Sgt James Barrett who told her the story for her book Pioneer Road.
Doing inventory in the supply room, Whitfield, the supply sergeant for the H&S Company, and a young Lieutenant, came across a sub-machine gun. The lieutenant showed Whitfield how to field strip the weapon and reassemble it. For reasons unknown he also loaded it. A few minutes later it discharged accidentally. The bullet entered Whitfield’s chest and he died instantly.
