On a summer day in Alaska, you can make the trip from breakfast to suppertime, rolling along a paved surface in a comfortable bus.
In 1942, thousands of U.S. Army engineers, including famous units of African- American soldiers, spent a desperate eight months, often in below-freezing weather, carving the route that you traverse so comfortably 62 years later.
It is the Alaska portion of the Alcan (Alaska-Canadian) Highway, still regarded among the world's most awesome engineering achievements.
The original road was built in an eight-month marathon construction project, from spring of 1942 to early winter. The 1,523-mile engineering feat links Dawson Creek in British Columbia with Fairbanks, the key interior town of Alaska.
The route traverses the rugged interior of the Yukon and central Alaska, a land of vast distances, tundra-like soil conditions, huge forests cut by streams and glacier-fed rivers and, in the distance, range after range of snow-covered mountains.
| Roy Parker Jr.'s Fayetteville Observer article "Black regiments made mark in Alaska" makes us feel like going for a drive
posted in articles on January 15, 2004 2:15 AM | t (0)
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