Opening up the last frontier and its future: the top ten projects that made the state what it is today.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: BUILDING ALASKA

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Alaska Highway: The Way North

With no maps, no aerial photography to guide a construction route, no means of communication and no supply lines, the shear logistics of building the Alaska Highway make it one of the most remarkable construction accomplishments in the state's history. On top of these challenges, little was known about construction techniques with permafrost, which presented a whole different set of problems. Contractors and project managers still look back in amazement that the U.S. Army troops assigned to building the road did as good of a job as they did.

Determining the route "was pretty much trial and error," Bruce Campbell, former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADT&PF) says. "They used the local knowledge of trappers and Indians to find a route to construct."

Workers came from three primary supply centers: Delta Junction, and on the Canadian side Whitehorse and Dawson Creek. They came on horseback, mule, jeep, Army truck, or in some cases by foot. They cut through the Bush and at the same time built the road--which resembled a trail as they traveled. Despite the physical demands of the job, they lived off as little as hotcakes and biscuits, often the only staples left after fresh, food supplies ran out.

Completed in 1943, the 1,522-mile long Alaska Highway--also known as the Alaskan Highway, Alaska-Canadian Highway, or the ALCAN--was constructed during World War II by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and connects the Continental United States to Alaska through Canada. It runs from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta]unction, Alaska, via Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Although the original road is responsible for the highway's reputation as being a driving nightmare, the modern highway is nothing like the muddy, twisting, single-lane trail fit only for trucks and bulldozers. Upgrades have been ongoing since it was built and today, it is relatively smooth going. In Canada, it is paved or packed gravel with a tar base and on the Alaska side, it is entirely paved. Still, there are stretches that have sudden, loose gravel breaks where the pavement has failed, and the asphalt paving ripples in places where frost heaves are caused by seasonal ground freezing and thawing.

"Some people still have the perception that they're going to be driving up through the wilderness and they need 17 spare tires and armor plates to punch their way through," Lynn Gabriel, deputy director of the Great Alaska Highways Society says. "We want people to know that you don't need a surplus army tank."

Fueling the Economy: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline

When describing his family, Elden Johnson says he and his wife Bonnie have three children--his two daughters, Katherine and Myra, and a third child named the trans-Alaska pipeline. A senior engineer advisor for Alyeska Pipeline Services Co., Johnson has worked on the pipeline for 36 years, first as a young engineer involved with the design and calculations for the pipeline, then as a field engineer during construction, and for the past 32 years as an engineer for Alyeska Pipeline Services Co., a position he accepted just after construction was completed. "We have grown up together," he says as he prepares to retire at the end of the year.

Regarded as one of the most amazing American engineering feats in history, the 800-mile pipeline is routinely compared to projects such as the Panama Canal and the Great Wall of China. Since the first barrel of oil entered the pipeline more than 30 years ago, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) has carried almost 16 billion barrels of Prudhoe Bay crude oil to Valdez, meaning $90 billion in revenues and accounting for 20 percent of the country's annual oil production. It cost $8 billion to construct and required building the pipeline bridge across the Yukon River 2,300 feet long with five 150-foot-high piers--as well as the $150 million, 360-mile Haul Road, now known as the Dalton Highway, from the Yukon River--to Prudhoe Bay to supply the oil facilities on the Slope. It spans 34 major rivers and 500 smaller ones, crosses three major mountain ranges, includes 579 elevated and buried animal crossings, functions in an air temperature range from -80[degrees]F to 95[degrees]F, and is designed to withstand a maximum 8.5 Richter Scale earthquake.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

About 75 percent of the pipeline passes through permafrost terrain. Ultimately, the completed pipeline would have 421 of its 800 miles built at least 10 feet above ground, elevated on top of 78,000 aboveground vertical support members (VSM) spaced 60 feet apart. To allow animals to cross where unfrozen or thaw-stable permafrost was encountered, the pipeline was buried in the conventional manner requiring no special provisions for permafrost. Where the permafrost was unstable, the pipeline still had to be buried to account for highway, animal crossings, or to avoid rockslides and avalanches. In that case, the permafrost was protected by burying the pipeline in insulated boxes.

It is this permafrost, Johnson says, that was one of the biggest challenges presented to engineers during the design stage. "The pipeline is the greatest story ever told of man's interaction with permafrost," Johnson says. "There has not been any other project that has had such a remarkable impact on the people of the Alaska and the United States, especially when you consider that this type of engineering had never been done before. It is amazing that the pipeline has worked as well as it has given the uncertainty and the unprecedented design."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Besides being remarkable as an engineering...