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Railroad in the Clouds The Alaska Railroad in the Age of Steam 1914-1945 Wilson
Railroad in the Clouds The Alaska Railroad in the Age of Steam 1914-1945 by William Wilson
Hard Cover with dust jacket
Copyright 1977
279 pages
Indexed
As the first complete study of The Alaska Railroad. this book traces her beginnings from 1914 - when struggling laborers tried to cc.: nstruct a line through the vast, inhospitable land -- through her workhorse role in supplying strategic Alaska during World War II.
When four travel-weary federal railroad commissioners reached Seward, Alaska, on September 15, 1912, they touched a land strewn with the bones of promoters' railways: The Alaska Pacific, the Valdez & Yukon, and dozens more. Those pathetic remains rested on the firm belief that railroads would develop the northland just as they had brought population to the agrarian West and wealth to the industrial East.
In Alaska the proposition had not worked. Most of the eight operating lines were nothing more than links to tidewater or navigable streams for some successful mining ventures. By "stateside" standards these short line roads were simply appalling.
By 1912, the failure of unassisted private railroad enterprise to move beyond the mining frontier made the transportation question Alaska's foremost economic problem. Grudgingly, Congress voted the appropriations to keep The Alaska Railroad rolling.
Railroad in the Clouds is the story of that railroad, from its beginnings in 1914 through its workhorse role in supplying strategic Alaska during World War II. Important as the railroad was for itself, it was bound to the larger issues and problems of a remote and difficult land hampered by harsh climates, forbidding terrain, and a small, scattered population. Thus, the story also involves the land The Alaska Railroad served. The relationship of land and railroad was rarely easy and sometimes explosive. Yet, for good or ill, their fates were entwined. That reality made the railroad an inseparable part of Alaskan history.
A compelling saga of the West's least known line, Railroad in the Clouds describes the origin and development of The Alaska Railroad with a dramatic, well-written narrative enhanced by over 250 historic photographs. 290 pages, footnotes, frontispiece, maps, bibliographic essay.
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