STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Rumble the Ground and Stir Up the Sea

The devastation overwhelms you–even in a photo

Rumble the ground and stir up the sea, every now and again, as if Alaskans didn’t have enough to contend with from mother nature, earthquakes do that under them. They are relatively used to it. During the last few years Chris and I have worked on Far North History, traveled to the region twice and made friends in Alaska—good friends. We see the stories on the news and all but lose it. For the most part they laugh at us.

Link to another story about the earthquake “Liquified Soil”

Like every other challenge that comes to them, they typically take the rumble of earthquakes in stride. They’ve been there before. Life goes on.

One time. One very memorable time, they did not take it in stride.

Mother nature has created a breathtaking part of the world, in the vast subarctic north, but she makes those who live there pay to experience it. She fights back with terrain, with climate. And sometimes the earth itself exacts the payment.

Under the Prince William Sound region of Alaska, the enormous Pacific Plate adjoins the equally enormous North American plate. Deep under the ocean, the Pacific Plate shoves into its northern neighbor with enormous force.

In the late afternoon on March 27, 1964—Good Friday– the Pacific Plate quite suddenly relieved the pressure by lurching northward, shoving under its neighbor. It moved for four and a half minutes and caused the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America; the second most powerful ever recorded, period.

And the earth didn’t stop exacting payment at the end of four and a half minutes. If you suddenly shake a pan of water, you make waves. Turns out an earthquake can do the same to the North Pacific Ocean. The tsunami that roared out of the oceans caused casualties and damage from the Kodiak Islands all the way down to Northern California. Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, Anchorage and, above all, Valdez suffered horrific damage.

Anchorage landslides wiped out city blocks—entire neighborhoods. Valdez literally disappeared. Alaskans rebuilt it in a different location nearby on more stable ground.

In Valdez children would gather at the dock when a ship came in. Sailors would toss fruit and treats… Unfortunately a ship was in on that Good Friday. The tsunami raised it then dropped it on top of the dock—and the children.

There to Meet the Corps

You Tube of the Engelsons in 1941–Don’t miss this.

There to meet the Corps of Engineers in 1942, Harold and Anna Engelson had made Ft. Nelson their home in 1939. I promise you will love this video.

Click to see the video the story and more photos.

Click Link to video

The link will take you to an utterly fantastic video their son Monte Engelson shared with my blog. If you’re short on time, skip about a quarter of the way to see Anna and Monte and toward the end to see the arrival of the soldiers.

Very young newlyweds The Engelsons had the kind of courage and spunk Northern Canada demands. When they arrived to make a new life there, Ft. Nelson existed only because mail could be addressed there. They settled into a little house and quickly became an integral part of a tiny community of trappers and hunters who equally surprised to find themselves also there to meet the Corps.

Anna became pregnant and the Monte Engleson who shared this story with us emerged into the world in that tiny house in British Columbia. The level of courage it took for beautiful Anna to deliver a child in those circumstances is beyond my comprehension.

Link to another story “The Road from Ft Nelson”

Harold, of course, worked very hard to support his family, but luckily for us he found time to indulge his hobby—taking home movies. Son Monte still has them and many years ago he compiled the movies into the incredible twenty minutes I know you enjoyed on the You Tube link.

In 1942 the Corps of Engineers descended on Ft Nelson; made it the major center of their operations on the Southern Sector of the Alaska Highway. Their impact is clear in the video.

Down the Yukon but Up the Teslin

Down the Yukon River but up the Teslin, steamboats like the SS Nisutlin carried the soldiers and equipment of the 340^th Engineers to their starting point at Teslin and Morley Bay deep in the interior of Yukon Territory. General Hoge had ordered the 340^th to build highway from there through into the mountains of British Columbia. Somewhere east of the Continental Divide they would meet the soldiers of the 35^th Engineers coming the other way.

Link to another story “The River Route”

But first they had to get there. From Skagway the White Pass and Yukon Railroad carried them up the mountains to Carcross and on to Whitehorse where men and material could transfer to steamboats on the Yukon. Down the Yukon? No problem. Up the Teslin? Entirely a different matter.

As soon as the Yukon River’s ice broke up on May 22, some 600 soldiers of the 340^th lined up by platoon and company in Skagway to board the trains of the WP&YR and invade Yukon. They scattered, of course, the train couldn’t carry them all at once. But around midnight on May 26 the first of them transferred from the train to the SS Nisutlin at Whitehorse and departed for Morley Bay.

The Nisutlin carried them 240 miles, and one of them, Leonard Cox, remembered the trip vividly. He and his fellows spent five days hanging out on the boat, enjoying the ride and the scenery. “The crew,” Cox remembered, “treated us like kings.”

The Nisutlin generated steam with a wood fired boiler; made repeated stops at native run wood camps along the way. Downstream on the Yukon became upstream on the Teslin and the swollen river went head-to-head with the boilers. When the way narrowed, sometimes to as little as 100 feet, the river surged at the boat and the boilers lost the battle. Forward progress came to a halt.

When this happened, the captain would maneuver close to the bank. Men would jump to shore, pull a cable across, and tie it to a tree. An on-board winch would wind in the cable, drag the boat a few feet. The crew on board would drop anchor. Men on shore would move the cable to a tree just a little further along and the winch would wind up a few more feet. The Nisutlin moved upstream a few excruciating feet at a time until the river widened and the current slowed.

The soldier passengers, according to Leonard, had it “pretty soft”. They relaxed, played cards, and enjoyed meals served on tables covered with white tablecloths.

The Teslin River today from You Tube

Heavy Equipment Breaks

For the 93^rd Engineers in Yukon in June the motor pool’s first frantic mission, getting heavy equipment through and out to the road, rapidly morphed into an equally frantic ongoing mission—supporting the line companies in maintaining and fixing it once they got it.

With heavy equipment, especially the big Caterpillar bulldozers, finally in hand, the black soldiers of the 93^rd Engineers raced through Yukon toward the Teslin River. The white soldiers of the 340^th needed an access road to their starting point 70 miles into the wilderness at the Teslin River. The dozers of the 93^rd rushed to create it.

But the primitive access road inevitably presented problems. In his memoirs, General Hoge remembered, “You had to go every day. . .we had to move. . .we had to make speed.” Mortimer Squires, motor officer for the 93^rd, remembered, simply, “We moved so fast.”

Swimming in the Subarctic North

Swimming? Not a topic you would expect in a story from the Alaska Highway Project, but here it comes…

Near the end of June, with the critical task of getting the 340^th to the Teslin River behind them, Headquarters moved up to Squanga Lake. One day, when the air temperature climbed to 80 degrees the lake actually looked inviting.

Everywhere along the path of the Highway, soldiers worked endless hours. Like gypsies, they moved their bivouac every two or three days, losing all sense of time. Life boiled down to bone-tired exhaustion—levering a dozer, swinging a sledge or axe, slogging through knee deep mud or wading through icy water carrying pieces of a bridge or culvert. They snatched food and sleep wherever and whenever they could fit it in. They had all washed faces, and some had taken sponge baths, but over the last month most of the soldiers, given a rare chance to rest, had fallen onto their cots wearing the road.

One joke that made the rounds… “Rumor has it that mosquitoes fell dead after biting certain members of the officer corps.”

The 18th, Pride of the Alcan Project

Heavy Equipment for the 18th leaving Skagway

The 18^th Combat Engineers, a crack outfit, came early to the Alaska Highway project. They came up the Inland Passage to Skagway, boarded the WP&YR and invaded Whitehorse in April. Their heavy equipment came up from Skagway in May. The only bright spot in General Hoge’s firmament, the 18^th immediately headed north out of Whitehorse, building road.

The 18th Comes to Skagway

The second platoon of Company F crossed the frozen Takhini River on the 19^th. When a snowstorm quickly followed by a thaw rendered the Takhini crossing more difficult, the 73rd Pontoon Engineers lashed a pontoon bridge across it. As equipment came up on WP&YT flatcars. The companies grabbed it and moved out across the new Takhini River bridge onto the road–“two ruts to nowhere” and a “damned hard thing to ride over.

General Hoge had surveyors out mapping the route. The bulldozers actually passed them, got ahead… “going lickety cut. . .trees just plop, plop, plop while they drove dozers right straight through. . .following their noses. . .their survey crew caught up with the dozers. . .and put out big stakes. . .but the [dozer] operators made their [own] choice for the road.”

Fifty-nine miles out of Whitehorse, the third platoon of Company C built Jo-Jo River Bridge, forty five feet long, sixteen feet wide and about twelve feet above the river in just ten hours.

They rebuilt the old bridge over Aishihik River; renamed it the Stockton Bridge.

Their road had more “curves than Hollywood”. It was faster to build around a hill than through it. But at the end of May, the 18th engineers occupied a sixty five mile corridor north through Yukon from Whitehorse.

Moldy Hay

Working to get to the hungry soldiers of the 35th

Moldy Hay, the only bedding available proved better than nothing to the soldiers of the 341st Engineers. Actually, no one slept much, and their lives wouldn’t get easier anytime soon. They had slept on the train on their first night in Dawson Creek. The next day with the temperature below zero they constructed the camp with moldy hay beds in a stubble field about two miles from the town.

Rescue Mission for the 341st

The 341st had been together less than two months. But with the 35^thEngineering Regiment in Fort Nelson, sick and running out of food, General O’Conner needed a supply road to them—yesterday! The Corps had brought the 341^st to Canada to provide that road, and, for better or for worse, the under equipped and inexperienced regiment had to make road.

The Regiment, less Company A, hurriedly moved to the foot of Charlie Lake, just outside of Fort St. John, and put their small allotment of D-4 dozers and trucks out on the road—counting on, on the job training to bring their operators and drivers up to speed. In a letter to his wife, Regimental Commander Col. Lane noted that ribbon clerks and office workers from Brooklyn and Jersey City didn’t bring a lot of useful background to the job of operating heavy equipment.

The 341st Engineering Regiment on the Road

When a captain ordered trucks and tractors backed into a clearing, and one of the drivers just sat there, the captain vociferously expressed his displeasure. The driver’s response? “I’m sorry sir, but I never drove a tractor before. I don’t know how to back up.”

Lacking heavy equipment, Lane planned to put his men in the woods with hand tools, cutting a wide swath and burning the downed trees and brush on top of the right of way. He hoped the fires and exposure to sunlight would dry and harden the ground.

Like his colleagues in Yukon Territory, he quickly learned a North Country lesson. Removing the insulating vegetation and then applying heat, turned what had appeared to be ‘ground’ into a sea of bottomless mud. In the end, the 341^st would lay corduroy over that first ten miles of mud and muskeg, creating what would forever be known as “Muskeg Flats”.

The area today

That’s My Grandpa

“That’s my grandpa” the comment on my post read. May Kaela Lavelais included a screenshot from google of the page in our book We Fought the Road that talked about Willie Lavelais.

Link to another story “Men of the 93rd”

When Captain sent Willie with Lt. Dudrow’s platoon on a quick side job, he didn’t know he gave the platoon a gift. The platoon needed a cook. Lavalais cooked.

The soldiers of the 93^rd Engineers working out of Carcross would have to cross the Tagish River and to do that they needed the services and equipment of a pontoon company stationed at Whitehorse fifty miles north. An old wagon road connected Whitehorse and Carcross, but it couldn’t handle a towed pontoon raft. Colonel Johnson ordered Captain Pollock to send a platoon to upgrade the old road and Pollock dispatched Dudrow’s platoon—and Willie Lavalais.

Working with hand tools, hauling their supplies and equipment in a 1 ½ ton truck, the platoon set out toward Whitehorse. After only a mile of slimy, rutted mud the road made its way toward the world’s smallest desert—642 acres.

Color photo of desert with mountains in background — Little Carcross Desert

Gateways to the Alcan

Gateways… The Alaska Highway that General Hoge and the Corps proposed to build in 1942 would traverse some of the most remote mountains and forests on earth. And if men traverse the North Country on primordial paths, they access those paths through equally primordial gateways.

Of the seven regiments that Hoge launched into the North Country, the 18^th and the 35^th Combat Engineering Regiments had been around for a long time, stood ready to go. In March he sent the 35^th to flood the gateway through the rail depot at Dawson Creek, across the Peace River and on over a rapidly melting winter road to Fort Nelson, BC.

Link to another story “Ft Nelson, BC”

soldiers gathered in front of tents — Hungry Soldiers

In April, Hoge aimed his other experienced regiment, the 18th at Yukon Territory—and the gateway that begins at the tiny port of Skagway, Alaska. The port of Skagway lies at the end of the Inside Passage, a coastal route that weaves through the islands on the Pacific Coast from Puget Sound at Olympia, Washington north between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia into the Alaska Panhandle. There one branch heads north to Skagway, a tiny bit of flat land between the Passage and the towering mountains of Yukon Territory.

The Gold Rush had left the narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Territory Railroad, and when Colonel Earl G. Paules brought his 18^th Engineers up from Vancouver Barracks in Seattle to Skagway, they rode to Whitehorse on the WP&YR.

Fresh out of white regiments, in April Hoge also dispatched the segregated 97^th Engineers to the gateway at Valdez, Alaska—the toughest gateway of all. He would make up for their assumed incompetence by surrounding them with civilian contractors, but in April contractors remained in Iowa negotiating contracts. When the 97th arrived, snow completely blocked the route out of Valdez. So much for a gateway.

Snow piled on mountain road — Recent Photo of Thompson Pass

An endless stream of Yukon bound regiments, attached units and PRA civilians would ultimately pour through Dawson Creek or ride the WP&YT over the White Pass out of Skagway. And after some delay civilian contractors would flood into and through Valdez.

Access Today

Jerry Potts, A Mountie’s Mountie

Jerry Potts, born to an Indian mother and white father in Montana, learned to fight early. Good thing. Tough, smart, expert with pistol rifle or any other weapon that came to hand, he lived at the heart of a violent and murderous time in the Canadian and American northwest.

Link to another story “A Quest to the Alaska Highway”

When Jerry’s father died his mother gave him to a fur trader and returned to her tribe. The trader, violent and vindictive, mistreated and then abandoned him. Another trader adopted him, saw that he learned to read and write and allowed him to mix freely with the various Indian tribes, learning their languages and customs.

Famous as an Indian fighter he fought at the heart of the last great Indian war in Canada, a war that pitted the Cree against several other tribes near Lethbridge. Of the battle Potts said, “You could fire with your eyes shut and be sure to kill a Cree.”

In 1872 a drunken whiskey trader killed his mother and Potts travelled back and shot the killer. Shortly after that he ran into a contingent of Northwest Mounted Police at Fort Benton. Aware of his prowess as a warrior, they hired him on the spot. He spent the rest of his life as a legendary member of the NWMP—22 years.

During his first few years, few major patrols went out without Potts in the lead. And when age finally slowed him down, he continued training new recruits and helping negotiate with the Indians.

His obituary in the Macleod Gazette and Alberta Livestock Record put it this way, [he] ““made it possible for a small and utterly insufficient force to occupy and gradually dominate what might so easily, under other circumstances, have been a hostile and difficult country. . . . Had he been other than he was . . . it is not too much to say that the history of the North West would have been vastly different to what it is.”