No irony accompanied the fact that in early 1942, the Aleutians offered the marauding Japanese a back door to America. America’s leaders decided she needed a road to Alaska to defend it, and some of them realized the road wouldn’t do a lot of good if convoys had to dedicate the bulk of their hauling capacity to hauling their own fuel. Even as they moved to create the highway, they initiated another stupendous project to provide that fuel.
The War Demanded the Alaska Highway
And no irony accompanied their plan to build a pipeline and road from Norman Wells in remote Northwest Territories over two ranges of towering mountains to an intersection with the Alaska Highway. From there the pipeline would follow the Highway north to Whitehorse. There they would build a refinery.
A land route to Alaska, a pipeline and a refinery in Northern Canada to fuel convoys along that route? All but impossible. But America had to have it. Thousands of men, soldiers and civilians struggled heroically to make it happen, and the last thing anybody worried about was cost.
In 1943 Northwest Service Command in Whitehorse turned its attention to the pipeline and the refinery. Most of the regiments of the Corps moved on to other things, but some soldiers remained behind to work with civilians on the Canol Project.
And oil flowed through the pipeline in April of 1944.
But history always returns to irony.
Even as the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor and invaded Attu and Kiska, justifying leaders’ concerns about defending the Aleutians, the American Navy won a pivotal victory at Midway. It took a while for anybody to realize it, but Midway brought Japanese ‘marauding’ to a screeching halt.
The need to get Lend-Lease aircraft from Montana to Alaska and on to the embattled Soviet Union, gave the Alaska Highway a whole new importance. But the Canol Project? Not so much.
Thousands of men, soldiers and civilians struggled heroically to make Canol happen. Nothing can diminish their achievement. But by early 1944, back in Washington, the Truman Commission was very much worried about cost and the massive cost overruns on Canol got their attention.
In the end the Army abandoned the pipeline, sold off the refinery in pieces.
More on Canol from Explorenorth.com
Wow. Another awesome read. I am learning so much of our history that was not taught in school. Thank you for sharing.
It’s folks like you who make the work worth it. Thank you
this better be a real recent pic or I am going to phucking pissed are these trucks still there screw your god damb shit history