Word: alcan
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Dates: during 1943-1943
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...Route. As events have fallen, The Road gets its finishing touches in time to serve as a memorial of its own necessity. Already an additional route has been pushed quietly from salt water opposite Skagway to a junction with the Alcan, 1 08 miles west of Whitehorse...
More likely for future development is the northern half of the Alcan, with its link to Haines. From tidewater on the Inside Passage at Haines (site of Chilkoot Barracks, longtime Army post) the cutoff climbs through Chilkat Pass, lower and easier than famed Chilkoot Pass of gold-rush days. Scenically the route is as spectacular as the well-advertised Banff-Jasper Highway in the Canadian Rockies...
Engineers Are Pioneers. As on the Alcan itself, the Army Engineers did the tough pioneering for the Haines cutoff. Without adequate maps or a ground survey, three companies of the 340th Engineers pushed into the snow late last winter. Location parties used dog teams and native guides. Working with limited equipment in winter weather, the "Hairy Ears" found a way, slashed out a tote road...
...Haines and the Alcan Highways surmounted the usual difficulties of wilderness construction, plus some special troubles native to the region. Muskeg and niggerhead swamps, hard to locate on the air maps, had to be skirted or heavily filled. North-country rivers looped their way all over the route...
Opening of the Alcan and its connections eases but does not end the prodigious labors of the Engineer troops who blazed the trail and the civilian contractors of the Public Roads Administration who ripped the permanent road through the North. Many a load of gravel will be dumped before the Engineers and the P.R.A. can dust their hands and call it a day. But the hard part is over...