Building Alaska.

• Position: Brief Article

With this issue, we add a new feature for our readers who are interested in the building trades business. Look for it every quarter as a special supplement to Alaska Business Monthly.

Alaska, the construction industry and trade unions, along with multiple support enterprises, have had interlocking relationships with each other since before 1930 AME (Alaska Modern Era).

For more than 100 years after its purchase in 1867, the Territory of Alaska lay essentially undeveloped and impacted little except by trappers and miners. By 1912, there was the railroad construction camp at the mouth of Ship Creek. It, and the railroad that came behind it, was built to move settlers and equipment to the Interior and coal to tidewater. That sparked the growth of two towns-Fairbanks and Anchorage.

But by the late...