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.
Every morsel they ate, every drop of fuel they burned had to come hundreds of miles out to them from the dock at Valdez. A civilian contractor had moved in behind them to bring supplies out from Valdez to Slana. But the soldiers moved further away from Slana every day, and between them and Slana lay the continental divide and the streams and rivers of the Yukon River System.
Heath Twichell in his Northwest Epic described one creative response. They built rough sleds on runners of logs, and their dozers dragged the sleds carrying supplies and fuel as they moved through the Tanana Valley. Of course, they had to replenish the fuel and supplies on the sleds. To do that they used the Little Tok River to its mouth on the Tok River. “Enough supplies for several additional weeks came floating down the Little Tok behind them, to be caught by a log boom after bobbing and bumping along over rapids and sandbars for 15 miles: fuel in half-filled drums; rations, spare parts, and miscellaneous items in lightly-loaded pontoons.”
The civilians working all around them described the process. “At one point in coming down the Tok Valley, one 97th crew had floated pontoons of supplies, rations, and half-filled gas and diesel fuel barrels down the Little Tok River fifteen miles to where they were caught in a log boom.”
Captain Walter Parsons who commanded Company F, described the process on the ground in a letter to his wife, Abbie. “We are having plenty hell. Most of our supplies are behind and the… companies out in front… are just getting by—packing our food in… We sent food down the river in boats but could not get the boats back up stream. Most of our fuel we get by half emptying full drums into empty drums and dumping both into the river. After 30 or 40 drums we send men walking down each side of the river to keep the drums on the way.”
I lived close to the Priest River in N. Idaho and the memory and stories I herd from old timers let me picture what you write. I really enjoy your writing.
Roy, thank you. And to anyone else reading Roy’s compliment–we aren’t related. Honest!
Seriously, Roy, I enjoy researching and writing this stuff so much it’s a big deal to have people want to read it.