The Ketchikan of the 1960s: This is the north end as it looked about the time I left in 1968. The airport is on a separate island in the foreground. I lived in a neighborhood up the hill near the center of this photo on the main island (foreground: Gravina Island, beyond is Revilla Island).
Anyone who has ever developed an interest in historic railroads or even the history of existing ones has probably run across references to ghost trains. This is usually a reference to sounds of steam engines, or their whistles or bells, locomotives from railroads that are long gone, with the stories often centering on old abandoned railroad grades where the rolling stock and locomotives are long gone and the iron rails themselves no longer exist.
It was just such a story, or, more correctly, series of stories, which brought an entire railroad to life for me--one that had nearly fallen completely out of sight of all but a few who had actually lived it. This railroad had not operated since 1938. It would have probably fallen out of sight completely as an Alaskan flag line had not one determined lady written a wonderful historic account of its beginnings and ultimate demise. Lone Janson wrote what I consider a ground-breaking history of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway (CR & NW) back in 1975. She masterfully detailed the complex political intrigue behind the construction of the CR & NW--the ongoing tug-of-war between two enormous forces: that of the Big Business of the Guggenheim Syndicate versus Teddy Roosevelt and his conservationists who did not want to see this railroad succeed for a variety of reasons.
The CRNW Railway at the wharf at Cordova
1975 was the year I returned to Alaska after fulfilling an obligation to serve in the U.S. Army just after the end of the Vietnam conflict. I came back in time to take part in the Alyeska pipeline construction project.
Alaska only became a state in 1959 because enough federal law-makers were finally convinced that Alaska could exist as a self-supporting state because oil had been discovered along the Kenai Peninsula in Cook Inlet. Alaska had always been a resource-rich territory. First there were the marine fur-bearing mammals that the Russian-American Company nearly brought to extinction in their zeal to make an easy fortune. Once Russia had cleaned out most of these, along with wiping out a substantial portion of the Aleut Native population that Russia used practically as slaves to assist in the harvesting of these creatures, it sold its interest in the territory to the United States.
This sale was the pet project of Secretary of State William Seward. The transaction would become known as "Seward's Folly," because many Americans were led to believe that Alaska was essentially an ice-box of no real value to anyone.
Yet the territory was to one day become the most valuable of all the states in terms of mineral and oil production, fisheries and timber. Eventually the latter two would die off, and even the heyday of gold would appear to be over, but not that of oil and gas. If you ignore some of the details of a story I am about to relate to you which includes oil development related to the Copper River & Northwestern Railway, oil was only in its initial stage of development in 1975.
The signing of the Treat of Cessation, which deeded Russia's interest in Alaska to the United States for 7.2 million dollars.
Very shortly after the purchase came a remarkable series of gold rushes, starting in southeast Alaska, then spreading into the Yukon Territory, then into the interior of Alaska. Alaska became known as a place to get rich panning for gold. Not many did, of course, but a great many mostly desperate men certainly tried. The most famous of these events was the Klondike Gold Rush which actually occurred in the Yukon Territory of Canada. This particular event would also spur the discoveries which would lead to the richest high-grade copper find in all of North America and maybe even the world. But that would be many years in the making.
Skagway Harbor: The port of the White Pass & Yukon Railway
With the Klondike gold rush came the construction of the first railroad to successfully enter the northern interior, piercing the rugged coastal range, extending from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Canada. This was a narrow-gauge railroad that, like many others to follow, was built too late to take advantage of the big gold rush, but nevertheless survived long enough to pick up some of the remaining business until it nearly died from lack of activity. This one, the White Pass and Yukon (WP & Y), was to be significant for events that were to follow within Alaska itself.
\The contractor in charge of construction of this scenic mountain railroad (1898-1900) was Michael J. Heney, The engineer in charge was Erastus C. Hawkins. Both of these would surface later when the time came for the construction of the CR & NW Railway a few years down the road.
White Pass & Yukon: construction arrives at the White Pass summit
One of the spin-offs of the WP & Y was a much lesser-known short line, the Klondike Mines Railway (KMR) out of Klondike City, across the Klondike River from Dawson City. This one, like the WP & Y, came too late to take advantage of the gold rush, but it nevertheless hung in there as an operating railroad entity from 1906 until 1913. Almost all of its rolling stock came from the WP & Y.
I had grown up in Ketchikan, the "gateway" community to Alaska on the southern end of southeast Alaska. I was well aware of Skagway, which was on the opposite end of the Alexander Archipelago which made up southeast Alaska, and knew it as a near-ghost town which happened to have an old railroad based there. Beyond that I knew very little about it.
Excursion on the White Pass: While I was growing up in Ketchikan, I did not know much about it, except that it was based in Skagway.
I knew even less of interior Alaska, even though my Native roots lay there. I had never even heard of the CR & NW until I read that book by Lone Janson, "The Copper Spike," about a year after it was published in 1976.
In fact, at the time I was hired by Bechtel to be a Native Site Counselor based in one of the large northern pipeline construction camps, I knew very little about my state at all even though I had grown up in southeast Alaska. I knew even less about the many historic railroads which had been largely responsible for turning the territory that had once been a remote part of the old Russian Empire into a viable American economic entity.
The Alyeska pipeline about twenty miles south of Delta Junction as it heads toward the Alaska Range on its way to the port at Valdez.