Engineering an arctic harbor is a complex specialty: sedimentation, tidal fluctuations, and noise challenges abound.

• Author: Jordan, Darryl
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

Alaska not only lost a chance for new resource development in the Chukchi Sea when Royal Dutch Shell announced a long suspension of oil exploration activities in September 2015, but within a month the study of a new Alaska Deep-Draft Arctic Port System (Arctic Port) also ended after four years. The US Army Corps of Engineers --Alaska District, in partnership with the State of Alaska, stated the suspension of the Arctic Port study would last twelve months in lieu of immediate termination. By October 15, 2016, the time would be used to find economic justification for the port study other than the armada supporting an oil and gas operation that had just vanished.

Even though the suspension time period technically lapsed five months ago, both the Corps and the State of Alaska confirmed that the status is still suspended. The good news for Alaska business is that the suspension has not yet turned into a termination for economic reasons.

Earlier Port Problems

The Arctic Port would not be the first port to be terminated for economic reasons. At the end of the 19th Century, the largest port on the Cook Inlet was named Knik. It was a port that was supported by the Knik docks in the sense that a port is defined by a place where ships load or unload. Indeed, Knik, at the northern tip of the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet, was chosen by thousands of gold prospectors as their jumping off place to unload their equipment to head further North to the Alaska gold fields.

There were thirty serious gold rushes to Alaska from 1880 to 1914. While the 1896 gold rush to the Canadian Klondike had numbers in the tens of thousands of miners, the numbers in Alaska were more modest but still measured in the thousands. The Nome gold rush of 1898 created the port of Nome, the river port on the Chena River was created by gold found in Fairbanks in 1902, and later gold discoveries at Iditarod in 1908 created a demand for a route into Interior Alaska. Early prospectors could use Dena'ina trails and Dena'ina guides to access the gold of Ophir.

The gold rush towns of Iditarod and nearby Ophir became ghost towns when the gold played out; but Ophir is a checkpoint on the Iditarod race trail.

These later gold fields created the port of Knik and the Southcentral economic center for trade and commerce in the early 1900s. Prospectors, once landed at Knik, purchased goods and services, all of which would also have to be shipped to Knik or procured from the local Dena'ina or other Athabaskan tribes trading at Knik. Ten days' travel by foot (less by horse or dog sled) would provide access using the Dena'ina routes for the prospectors seeking their fortune. Getting into the 1900 Knik dock was a different problem.

Sailing into the Cook Inlet with a ship large enough to cross the ocean did not allow a landing in shallow waters. Even at high tide, these vessels could not navigate the branch of the Cook Inlet, the Knik Arm. The result was a large...