ALASKA: A MODERN FRONTIER

Does this look like a farm in the Midwestern United States? Actually, we are looking at Alaska, important part of the United States. The story of Alaska is a big story of a big land, a rich land that is being developed by hard-working settlers who are building a new region out of our last frontier. Let's get better acquainted with Alaska so we can understand why it's so important to us. One reason for Alaska's importance is its geographical position in the path of the air routes over the roof of the world. The airplane is making Alaska a center of the new communication routes of our air age. Another important feature to notice is Alaska's size. Let's compare it with the size of the United States. We can see that it's about 1/5 the size of our whole country. Alaska's vast undeveloped regions are a storehouse of natural wealth. There are magnificent mountain ranges bearing precious ores of gold, silver, and copper. There are 20 million acres of forest, the lumber and wood pulp for future American markets. There are cold rivers that are teeming with fish. And along the coastline, there are untapped deposits of oil. Because Alaska extends about 1,200 mi from north to south, it has a variety of climate. For example, north of the Arctic Circle, we see Alaska as most of us know it, a barren, windswept region. Here, the summers are cool, and the ground just below the surface is always frozen. But did you know that in central Alaska, the heat of summer is about the same as that in New York City? And along the southern coast, the climate is similar to that in Seattle. So, Alaska, as we are beginning to see, is not a land of endless ice and snow. Alaska was brought closer to us with the building of the Alaska Highway in 1942. Built with the cooperation of our Canadian neighbors, this famous highway connects with the Canadian roads at Dawson Creek, thus completing the first land route between the United States and Alaska. From Dawson Creek, it is a 1,500 mile drive to the end of the highway in Fairbanks, Alaska. Building the Alaska Highway was one of the great engineering jobs of our time. Men had to cut the road through the forest wilderness and build it up over the soft, swampy ground called muskeg. The road stretches across beautiful, rugged country that is sometimes called America's last frontier. Terminus of the highway is Fairbanks, an important transportation center in the heart of Alaska. Here is a growing community with paved streets, theaters, hotels, and stores. Most of the buildings, such as this hospital, are of wood, which is so plentiful here. The houses themselves tell the story of the growing town. Although modern houses, such as these, are being constructed, many log cabins are also built. Fairbanks is linked to the surrounding region by telephone and telegraph. It also has bus service to other towns in Alaska, and it is connected to the southern coast by the Alaska Railroad. The most important means of communication in Alaska are the radio and the airplane. Alaskans have been called the flyingest people in the world. And when we remember how big Alaska is and how much of it is covered with forests and mountains, we can understand why airplanes are the best means of getting from place to place. We have already seen something of Alaska's importance in the air age. The shortest air route from the United States to China, for example, passes through Fairbanks. Large planes have given Alaska a new place in world transportation. Small planes have solved the problem of local transportation, for they can land on small fields or on the countless rivers and lakes in Alaska's back country. On some planes, pontoons are replaced with skis in the winter for landing on ice and snow. Planes carry mail, furs, meat, medicines, livestock, supplies of every kind. Here, for instance, mining machinery weighing 900 lb is being loaded into a plane. It will be flown over mountains to this mining camp in an isolated mountain valley. Here, the machinery is unloaded to be used in mining one of Alaska's most valuable minerals, gold. The glamour of the gold rush of 1898 has largely disappeared. Today, gold mining is a big industry using mechanized methods. The old prospector with his pick and shovel has been replaced by the modern hydraulic miner. The early miners exhausted most of the gold on the surface. So today big dredges dig the gold ore that lies deeper in the earth. Gold mining is a valuable industry. But Alaska's greatest source of wealth is salmon fishing. More than half of the world's supply of salmon comes from Alaskan canneries. In June and July the shallow waters of the Gulf of Alaska and of Bristol Bay are dotted with fishing boats. Fish are also caught in Alaska's many rivers. Here is Alaska's greatest treasure, the silver salmon, worth more to us than Alaskan gold. In addition to fishing and mining, agriculture is being developed as a new industry. Most of us have heard about the Matanuska Colony in Southern Alaska, begun by settlers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Like our early pioneers, these Americans faced the tough job of clearing the new land. But today the fertile soil yields excellent crops and the valley wilderness is being replaced with cultivated fields. Some farms are devoted to raising poultry or hogs or dairy cows. Dairy farming has proved to be profitable in Alaska today. But what about old Alaska, the land of the Eskimos? To see that let's go from the Matanuska Valley to an Eskimo village near Nome. Of course the trip is made by plane. Flying northward we see one of Alaska's most magnificent sights, Mount McKinley, the highest mountain on the continent of North America. Here are jagged peaks and vast regions of ice and snow, a strange cold world. The snow from the high slopes fills the deep valleys to form glaciers, the great frozen rivers that move slowly down to the lower valleys. There they melt to form glacial streams and rivers. Here on the coast of the Bering Sea, we find Eskimo villages, usually close to the water. Today, the Eskimos build wooden houses and are well acquainted with modern modern ways of living. However, many of them still wear the Eskimo jacket or parka. And they still live mainly by hunting and fishing. The men are skillful seamen and pursue seals and whales in the Arctic Ocean and in the Bering Sea. They still use boats made of wood covered with sealskin. This Eskimo woman is cutting whale meat into strips to hang in the sun. Open-air drying is a common method of preserving meat or fish for use in the winter. Native Eskimo life is one of Alaska's many tourist attractions. At Nome, visitors enjoy watching the Eskimo game of blanket tossing. The game is a great event for the fun-loving Eskimos. These friendly people are a part of the story of Alaska. That story is changing rapidly from the old Alaska to the new Alaska. From the log cabin to the modern city. We haven't seen all of the story of Alaska because much of it will be happening in the future. At the University of Alaska, young people are preparing for that future. Alaskans are working and building to improve their land. But there is still much to do. Developing a new region is a big job, which we can understand because we've seen how big Alaska is. We know too how important Alaska is to us because of its position in the air world. And we have seen Alaska's importance in terms of its natural wealth. The timber, the minerals, the fish, and the farmlands. And there is one more kind of wealth that Alaska has, its young American citizens. The children who will someday add their achievements to the story of Alaska.