Caterpillar dozers did jobs on the Alcan project that Caterpillar never imagined. One night a sergeant of the 18th Engineers, working his D8 into and through the trees, acquired a determined grizzly bear guide and companion. He swerved toward the giant bear and it ran away, but as soon as he returned to his work, …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway
Bison
Bison? When an old bull bison with a ridiculous short beard and a head twice as big as his backside ignores you, you, by God, stay ignored. And, if he ignores you, his entire herd ignores you. Even if you bear down on them driving a massive tractor trailer truck, you had better be …
Rippling Rhythm Boulevard
Rippling rhythm describes bouncing truck tires rolling over corduroy. And on the Alaska Highway in 1942 corduroy had nothing to do with fabric. The road builders fought one of Mother Nature’s fiercest weapons with their version of “corduroy”. From the southern end of the route in British Columbia to the northern end in Alaska, nature …
Marl Brown, At the Heart of the Alaska Highway
In 1957 the Canadian Army stationed Marl Brown on the Alaska Highway; put him to work fixing its new vehicles. But Marl fell in love with the old vehicles scattered along the road, rusted hulks with trees growing through them. The waste bothered him, so he devoted his life to rescuing them. Sixty odd …
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Blazing the Path of the Alcan
Blazing the 1800-mile path of the Alaska Highway, soldier topographers led the way into the subarctic wilds of Northern Canada and Alaska in 1942. The first road builders rushed into frigid British Columbia in March. The soldiers of the 29th and the 648th Topographic Battalions had come in February. Instead of maps, the topographers had …
Tagish River
Tagish River, 1,275 feet wide, posed the first major obstacle to the 93rd Engineering Regiment. To build Alaska Highway through Yukon, the soldiers of the 93rd had to get a road out of Carcross, and during the first week of May local guide, Johnny Johns, guided Captain James Cassano as he laid out a path …
The Steepest Railroad Grade
The steepest railroad grade in the world, the White Pass and Yukon Railway (WP&YR), carried men, supplies, and equipment for building the Alaska Highway up into Yukon Territory in 1942. From sea level at the Skagway dock the rails climbed 2,900 feet in just 19 miles. Whitehorse Yukon 1942 The Saturday Evening Post in its …
“My uncle, Chester Russell, worked on the Highway.”
“My uncle”?! Jim Price’s comment on one of my blogs a couple of years ago grabbed my attention. Chester Russel, an icon for historians of the Alaska Highway, had turned up repeatedly in our research for our book, We Fought the Road. We Fought the Road on Amazon The Most Colorful Soldier In early 1942 …
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Subarctic Cold
Subarctic cold should have stopped the men building the Alaska Highway in 1942 dead in their tracks. To be sure, endless problems confronted them every step along their way and finding solutions and driving on rendered their achievement epic. But none of the endless list of obstacles—mountains, mud, muskeg, permafrost, mosquitoes and all the …
Too Heavy for Muskeg—And the Statute of Limitations
Too heavy, almost any piece of equipment could sink into British Columbia muskeg. After the war Chester Russel made a living during summers as a commercial fisherman, but in winter he returned to catskinnning. Over the years as technology changed and new tractors and dozers came available, he often thought about how the new equipment …
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