The climax of the Alaska Highway Project approached as October turned to November in 1942. On the southern portion of the Highway, two regiments had met at Contact Creek in September and opened the road from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse. Work all along that stretch of the Alcan transitioned from building to improving. Up north, …
Category Archives: Alaska Highway
Ice Posed the Biggest Problem in the Winter
Subarctic Cold and Vehicles Ice posed a much bigger problem than snow to the soldiers working on the Alaska Highway into the winter of 1942. When snow came, bulldozers and graders could remove it relatively easily. Ice was a different matter. At more than 250 places between Watson Lake and the Alaska border frequent icing …
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Subarctic Cold and Vehicles
Subarctic cold threatened vehicles then the vehicles threatened the men who drove them. Treacherous winter roads caused wrecks that killed and maimed. Relatively good traction, in severe cold, disappeared when temperatures warmed toward freezing. Griffith in his Trucking the Tote Road to Alaska remembered, “I have seen tools, chains, men and even trucks sliding down …
Pipeline Through Alaska
Why the pipeline Pipeline construction across eight hundred miles of Alaska required more than just pipe. The line included twelve pumping stations, and a new tanker port at Valdez. The pipeline project employed tens of thousands of people. It required the construction of the Dalton Highway. And it cost $8 billion dollars. Thirty- two people …
Oil Under Prudhoe Bay
Oil, pooled deep under Prudhoe Bay, offered the greatest Alaska treasure of all. Men had come to Alaska for furs and fish and for Gold. In 1968 men came for oil, and they found one of the top 20 oil fields ever discovered anywhere in the world. More on recent Alaska history Problem. Prudhoe …
Ten Mutineers
Ten young black men from the hot and humid South, Sgt. Heard and his squad had endured the spring and summer of 1942 building Alaska Highway through the wilds of Alaska. In late fall Company F and the squad had crossed into Yukon Territory to work on south through piling snow and plunging temperatures. Back …
Thanksgiving in Yukon and Tim’s Best Story
Thanksgiving in Yukon, at Morley Bay, gave Tim’s best story its punchline. All of Tim’s stories conveyed feelings and meaning wrapped in humor, and the funniest and most meaningful ones we couldn’t hear too many times. His thanksgiving at Morley Bay gave him the best punchline he ever used. Christmas in Yukon The story didn’t …
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Departing Our World, Samuel Hargroves
Departing our world for a better place on November 21, former United States Army Tech 5 Samuel Hargroves, one of the last survivors of a very special group of men, left it a lesser place. Millions of men stepped up during the catastrophe of World War II to defend their country. But black men like …
Winter and Sergeant Heard’s Squad
Winter, 1942-43, a winter natives and old timers in Alaska and Northern Canada remembered as the worst since 1917, found Sergeant Heard and his men enduring at Northway, near the Canadian border. Temperatures reached 72 degrees below zero and the white officers of Company F abandoned their frigid quarters for days at a time, crowding …
Cold Soldiers in 1942
What Extreme Cold Does to Equipment—and Beer Cold posed the greatest threat to soldiers on the Alaska Highway Project. And the coldest winter ever recorded across northwest Canada and Alaska commenced in earnest in October 1942. Soldiers working on the Alaska Highway headed into a whole new experience. By December and January, the temperature routinely …