Rough draft or not, the Army proposed to use its new Alaska Highway. Cpl. Gronke and Pvt. Bowie had thrilled reporters and their readers by driving its length in a half-ton weapons carrier. The convoys of 2 ½-ton cargo trucks that followed got far less attention. Awards, Celebrations and Giving a Damn A good thing …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway
South Canol Rest Area
South Canol Rest Area looks like a normal roadside rest area, but on the Alaska Highway you know better than to expect normal. In this rest area you park among a collection of incredibly old, very rusty, and exceedingly cool abandoned cars and trucks. Driving north through Yukon Territory, between Teslin and Whitehorse, you cross …
Since 1942
Since 1942 thousands of men and two governments have struggled to complete the Alaska Highway. It hasn’t happened yet. In the summer of 2017, men and heavy equipment worked over several miles of the Highway north of Kluane Lake. Waiting for their turn to pass through the construction zone, some drivers got out to …
Muscle and Bone
Muscle and bone and sheer determination were, by mid-summer tearing a long Alaska Highway out of the subarctic wilderness. By July from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Tok, Alaska, against all odds, the Highway began to emerge, and the modern epic caught the attention of the outside world. Reporters bestowed nicknames on the project. …
Stone Sheep
Stone Sheep, the sight of one—or two or three—perched on a ledge on a high rock cliff above the Alaska Highway will bring your vehicle to the side of the road and your camera to your eye just as surely as the sight of a grizzly. They turn craggy heads with great curved horns. Their …
Timber Bridges
Timber bridges installed by Alaska Highway builders speeding through the subarctic region in the summer of 1942 survived their first winter. Well… some of them survived. The soldiers, forced to add building timber bridges to their rapidly expanding skill set, learned speed not quality. North of Whitehorse, just forty soldiers built Jo-Jo River Bridge, forty …
Hinkle and Boyd’s Canyon
Hinkel, a Tech 4 catskinner in Company C, bulldozed dirt down the wall of Boyd’s Canyon. He got too close, and his dozer followed the dirt over the edge. He rode his steel mount all the way down to the bottom; and, luckily, the dozer landed on its tracks. Boyd, his company commander, hurriedly clambered …
Barge “Bridges”
Barge “bridges” solved a major problem in 1942. Building 1800 miles of road through the towering mountain ranges of Northern Canada and Alaska required building around, through and over a maze of rivers. In a wartime emergency, working against an unbelievable eight-month deadline, the soldiers “bridged” the biggest rivers with barges or pontoon ferries. Real …
Nature Could Beat the Dozers
Nature fought the Alaska Highway builders in 1942—fought them hard. And, for all their awesome power, sometimes even the monster dozers lost a battle. At mid-summer, the soldiers of the 93rd Engineers struggled through Yukon. Nature opened her spigots and endless rain fell day after day. Long stretches of road turned to thick mud with …
Correction about D8 Caterpillar
Correction. The historical accuracy of these stories is extremely imortant to me and I always appreciate a factual correction. Last night I posted about Caterpillar bulldozers on the Alaska Highway Project. At one point I referred to the D8’s air cooled engine. Caterpillar Dozers–the Offending Story Those of you who visit and follow this blog …