On the north bank of the Tanana River, near present day Tok, Alaska the black soldiers of the 97th Engineering Regiment would finally reach the starting gate. The white soldiers of the 18th Engineering Regiment raced north through Yukon Territory toward the Alaska border. From the north bank of the Tanana the 97th would race south to meet them.
More on the route to the Tanana
By August 20 a survey party, following maps and staking the route, had crossed the river. The soldiers of Company A camped just four miles back at the edge of what the soldiers remembered as the Tanana flats.
The Tanana River expands to a width of several miles during the spring thaw and then shrinks dramatically during the rest of the year, leaving a broad flat dry area on either side of the flowing water. Company A easily crossed the few miles of dry riverbed to the river. Company A Commander, Captain Andrew McMeekin, had left the company bivouac on August 15 with a transit, shooting the most direct tangent to the river. A single D-8 had followed him, and that night soldiers of Company A camped on the bank of the river.
But on the riverbank, at the junction of the Tok and Tanana Rivers, Company A had a problem. Pontoon boats and bridging material, ordered well in advance, had come to Skagway instead of Valdez, wound up hundreds of miles away in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Re-routed, the equipment headed up the Gulf of Alaska, but company commanders in Colonel Robinson’s regiment knew not to wait around for someone else to solve the problem.
A sternwheel steamboat, travelling from Fairbanks to trade with the Tanacross, Tetlin and Northway First Nations, came down the river, McMeekin hailed it and quickly made a deal with its owner/captain. The old steamer ferried Company A and its equipment across, one bulldozer at a time. And the soldiers of Company A turned to follow the survey stakes toward Canada and the 18th..
