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.
The contractors and their managers had never operated in total isolation, and Alaska threw them a curveball. Consequences showed up as workers stepped off their planes at Fairbanks and Big Delta and Nabesna and found nothing there, struggled to get to the circus tent.
Consequences continued to surface. A thousand men slept in shifts in the tent. With no equipment in hand they couldn’t work. But they could and did eat, went through groceries at a terrifying rate. Replacement groceries came slowly if at all.
Don Garlock remembered one particular meal, “had a gallon of cold potatoes, some cold baking powder biscuits and some leftover tomato soup that was stuck to the bottom of the pan. Then we had to make coffee in the soup kettle with no way of washing it out…”
Men got sick or got injured. Gulkana had no doctors.
The civilian workers got filthy and the circus tent didn’t smell good. The nearby Gulkana River offered the only facility for bathing or doing laundry. Max Smith wrote home, “I washed yesterday and today both. I guess I told you about taking a bath in the river, boy it is cold…”
The contractors hustled to build showers and Max wrote home again on July 26, “I really feel good today. I got up this morning about 9:30 went over and took a shower. With hot water, that is something, it is the first one since I left Edmonton.”