Young black soldiers from the Carolinas and Georgia who came to Valdez, Alaska with the 97th Engineering Regiment weathered the shock of an Alaska winter. They worked between the snowbanks on Alaska Avenue out to tent cities, bivouacs, thirteen miles out of town on the Richardson Highway and near the crumbling ruins of Wortman’s Roadhouse at the entrance to Keystone Canyon.
More on the Port of Valdez in 1942
Thompson Pass closed for winters. In May 1942 the young black soldiers camped near the crumbling foundations of the old Wortman’s roadhouse, helped the Alaska Road Commission clear and open the Pass.
In mid-May Bulldozers and trucks began to arrive at the Valdez Dock.
The following is from our book in progress, A Different Race.
Black soldiers scrambled aboard each arriving ship, unchained the deck loaded vehicles, and fired up the roaring, whistling diesel engines. Trucks and later dozers rumbled down to the dock, along its length across the mud flats to Alaska Avenue, then moved out in file on the avenue to the crowded airstrip. At the airstrip men from the line companies took over to drive them out on the Richardson.
Like the docks, the Richardson Highway had never seen such traffic. And it came at the worst possible time of year. A rough, two-lane gravel road at its best, the highway required constant maintenance. In May the spring thaw turned mountains of snow into water and stretches of the highway dissolved into rutted muck that marching soldiers and heavy vehicles churned into a quagmire.
Pulling out of the airstrip and turning onto the highway a young black soldier faced a flat stretch of dirt road bordered by a few frame buildings. A pole frame supported a wooden sign, “Richardson Highway…” His eye followed the line of the road to an ominously looming range of mountains in the distance. He rumbled along for a few miles, the mountains got closer.
Until May 20 his trip would end at the 13-mile camp or maybe just a few miles further at the crumbling foundations of the old Wortman’s Roadhouse where the soldiers of Company E bivouacked while they cleared snow from Keystone Canyon and Thompson Pass. As trucks came to the line, the companies gained mobility, could convoy instead of walking. But until Thompson Pass opened, their mobility didn’t mean much.
The Pass opened on May 20.
For More on the Old Valdez Town Site