Willis Grafe, in early 1942, had a job he didn’t like in Salem, Oregon. And he heard a rumor. The United States Public Roads Administration wanted to hire surveyors to send north to Canada and Alaska to help the Army build a Highway. Link to another story “Civilians on the Alaska Highway Project” In his …
Category Archives: Alaska Highway
Equal Opportunity Torture
Equal opportunity torture. The subarctic north offered cold and mud and cliffs to anybody who challenged it. And, as the black soldiers of the Corps would learn when they came in 1942, the mosquitoes and the no see ums landed and feasted on skin, utterly indifferent to whether it was black skin or white. Link …
Nature, Dictator not ‘Mother’
Nature, a dictator, not a ‘mother’, rules the rugged, remote, austere, breathtakingly beautiful, and viciously inhospitable subarctic north. In 1942 the Corps of Engineers had no choice. A land route to Alaska, an Alaska Highway, would have to span this portion of nature’s turf. Link to another story “The Only Possible Route” To this day …
Entertainment
Entertainment did not come easy to young men stuck in camp in the deep woods along the Alaska Highway. Edward “Whiskers” Frankenberg and his fellows found that getting bears to eat out of their hands definitely provided entertainment. Whiskers told Donna Blasor-Bernhardt about it for her book, Pioneer Road. Link to another story “The Rude …
Youngest Alaska Highway Trucker
Youngest Alaska Highway Trucker? Without any doubt, Owen Ose holds that title. When three-year-old Owen piloted his truck on the Highway, the Corps of Engineers hadn’t even finished it. Owen, when he shared this claim with me a couple of years ago, hastened to add that the truck the youngest driver drove had “Tonka” printed …
Bishop Coudert’s Frozen Dinner
Bishop Coudert grabbed a plate of hot food in the kitchen tent. By the time he got it to the mess tent, 120 feet away, it had frozen solid. William Griggs spilled gasoline on his clothing, it evaporated so fast that when he hurriedly peeled it off, skin came with it. No mere thermometer …
Uniforms
Uniforms presented the soldiers of the 97th their single worst problem during the awful Alaska winter of 1942/43. Senior commanders, the men ultimately responsible for providing adequate clothing and equipment apparently had other things on their minds—until the Washburn Report landed on their desks and the desks of their superior officers back in Washington. H. …
Two Bulldozers
Two bulldozers parked nose to nose. Two operators reached across between them to shake hands. Their picture went out on the news wires, and the army’s publicity machine launched. Link to another story “The Press and Beaver Creek” Two bulldozers and the photo be damned, a significant piece of the road still did not exist. …
The Press and Beaver Creek
The press, in the person of Harold W. Richardson of the Engineering News-Record, came to the Alaska/Canada border in the nick of time. American and Canadian newspapers had kept their readers focused on the last fifty miles of the Alaska Highway. That meant the Army’s publicity machine focused on the last fifty miles. And that …
The Pressure Ratcheted Up a Notch
The pressure on the 97th and the 18th Engineers, working toward each other at the northern end of the Alaska Highway, ratcheted up on September 24. On that day, down in British Columbia, the 35th and the 340th Engineers met at Contact Creek and completed the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse. LInk to …