Starting at the Little Tok River, the young black soldiers of the 97th Engineers raced north, ever deeper into Alaska, in early August. They would start constructing their portion of the Alaska Highway on the north bank of the Tanana River. But they had to build their own road to get there. Tanana River Starting …
Category Archives: Alaska Highway
Permafrost
Permafrost proves conclusively, if we actually needed more proof, that in the Far North, Mother Nature fights back with endless creativity. The mileage champions of the Alaska Highway Project, the 18th Engineering Regiment, faced and bested every challenge. Then they passed the Big Duke River, and Mother introduced them to permafrost—muskeg on steroids. Slims River …
Tanana River Starting Line
On the north bank of the Tanana River, near present day Tok, Alaska the black soldiers of the 97th Engineering Regiment would finally reach the starting gate. The white soldiers of the 18th Engineering Regiment raced north through Yukon Territory toward the Alaska border. From the north bank of the Tanana the 97th would race …
Cresting the Continental Divide
Moving west from the Gulf of Alaska into the interior means cresting a rugged range of mountains that separate two great drainage systems. One system drains from their crest back to the Gulf. The other drains north through the Yukon River System to the Bering Sea. The generals who routed the Alaska Highway through Alaska …
White Civilians Meet Black Soldiers in Alaska
White civilians, contractors, came up behind the black soldiers of the 97th at the end of July. They set up tents at what they called the What Fir Camp, found black soldiers working all around them. The next morning Bubbles Smith ventured out with a group of his fellow white civilians. A black soldier stopped …
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The Scottish Lady
The lady, The Scottish Lady, began her life a graceful clipper ship, ended it a barge in the Gulf of Alaska. With her graceful female figurehead out front, the proud Lady plied the seven seas for decades. Dismasted in a typhoon out of Manilla in 1871, she recovered (with help from shipyards, of course) …
Circus Tent at Gulkana
A circus tent housed Iowa civilians in Gulkana Alaska in July 1942. They came in droves to help build the Alaska Highway through Alaska. Filled the big circus tent to bursting. More on the Iowans at Gulkana The contractors and their managers had never operated in total isolation, and Alaska threw them a curveball. Consequences …
Planes to Alaska
At the end of June, civilian workers began piling into planes for the trip north. Forest fires raged north of Edmonton and the planes flew through heavy smoke. Max Smith wrote, “I am writing this letter from a plane 15,000 feet in the air going 165 to 185 miles per hour somewhere over the northwest …
Iowa Expeditionary Force
The “Iowa Expeditionary Force” came to Alaska with the 97th Engineering Regiment. Forced by the shortage of troops to send the segregated 97th to build the Alaska Highway through Alaska, two reluctant generals planned to surround them with white civilian contractors. They found an Iowa management contractor, Lytle and Green; and Lytle and Green went …
War Machine Makes it Real
The war machine, the Japanese advance across the Pacific inspired the Alaska Highway Project. But the soldiers and civilians who went north to build the Highway, left the rolling catastrophe behind, struggled to keep up with news of the war. If few understood the complex geography of the Pacific, in early 1942 everybody understood …