Soldiers and Civilians

For More on the Effort in Alaska

The Army sent both soldiers and civilians to the Alaska Highway Project.

The Army can dispatch soldiers, organized into military units with equipment more or less in hand, relatively quickly in an emergency. Soldiers in wartime face danger and endure hardship. Speed trumps quality. In 1942 at the point of the spear, soldiers plowed into the Far North wilderness, endured, survived and carved out a rudimentary road.

But the Army also turned to the Public Roads Administration (PRA) to surround the battling soldiers with civilian contractors. Civilians would take more time to get organized, recruit workers and get to the job. But, once in place, civilians would work more methodically, would concern themselves with quality as well as speed.

The Corps had dispatched soldiers to Alaska in April, the soldiers of the 97th. In May the PRA dispatched Iowa contractor Lytle and Green. Immediately after Lytle and Green signed their contract with the PRA, they went back to Iowa and signed contracts with fourteen subcontractors.

Lytle and Green had three primary missions. They would “widen, improve or relocate” the road from Gulkana to Slana. They would follow the “engineer troops” from Slana through Mentasta Pass and on to the Tanana River, upgrading their “pioneer truck road”. And they would build a road from Big Delta southeast to the Tanana River crossing.

The fourteen Iowa contractors in the words of Milton Duesenberg, “…from Cumberland to Independence, from Cedar Rapids to Hawarden and a dozen other Iowa communities,” immediately began recruiting men to do the work and loading equipment—bulldozers, scoop shovels, graders and trucks–onto rail cars.

Through late May, June and into July a flood of civilian workers made their way north. Some sailed north from Seattle or Prince Rupert. Most went to Edmonton, Alberta by rail and then flew north to airstrips near Big Delta and Gulkana on Army transport or commercial airlines.