Alaskan Highway (1940s)

[Music] the Alaska Highway open sucks begin to roll supplies for our armies in Alaska and the Aleutian months ahead of schedule all of us are keenly interested in this great engineering achievement but it has it spending to BFGoodrich men and women because tires made by them helped to fill this role today it's a broad smooth highway but the job of building it through the almost uncharted wilderness over deep and rapid rivers and streams over and around some of the roughest mountains in North America was an undertaking that took strength and stamina on the part of the men who built the road and on the part of the equipment they used colossal stupendous all the moving-picture adjectives are mild when they're applied to this job one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times it was a job that couldn't be done but they did it you see the control of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands is vital to the military security of the United States and Canada rocky desolate fog and icebound much of the year the peninsula of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands are nevertheless of great military importance with many fine harbors and air base sites the Aleutian stretch out about halfway to Tokyo from the mainland of North America when war was declared the Army and Navy immediately started building new airfields improving harbors fortifying and manning's of miles of coastlines in this strategic area men guns tanks ammunition and tons of supplies were rushed by airplanes and ships to these important American outpost but shifts were not enough fogs storms ice made this supply line too uncertain a sure way to keep a great Alaskan army supplied had to be found and so the United States Army engineers tackled the job of building over 1,200 miles of new road to connect Fairbanks with the railroad and they already built highway at Dawson Creek to give you an idea of just what a job it was let's listen to a chap who really knows what happened yeah the road looks fine now but remember that we built that road through some of the toughest wilderness nature ever invented men had to take it sure so did the road building machines and other equipment tires tires of every kind of description from Jeep tires all the way up to the big bruisers used on the big babies had to take a beating beyond what any of us had ever thought of in the winter ice and snow piled up as only a can in Alaska we had to hack our way through raw wilderness over or around mountains some of them kept with snow and ice the year round over rivers and streams that were so Swift it looked as if nobody could put a bridge over yes we had to fight every inch of our way for 1,200 miles to build the Alaska Highway six gangs of us started out about the same time and worked toward each other we raced against time and against each other seven days and seven nights a week until the job was done and in record time six months for a job that should have taken six years headquarters were set up at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory if you think Whitehorse was a boomtown in the gold rush days you should have seen it when three thousand of us rolled in and got to work Brigadier General William Howe and his executive officer major EJ and were among the first to arrive is he it was a big job just to make sure that eats and tools and everything was on hand when we ruled builders got their water mastered depots were set up at the rail head here supplies were rustled from freight cars to trucks and shoved ahead to base camps in army code the road was called the Alcan Highway but we called it the oil can highway after wrestling with a few thousand of these drums drums drums drums filled they carried gas and oil empty well they were used for everything the road starts in Edmonton a big Canadian rail and the Highway Center a railroad connects Edmonton with Dawson Creek and that's where the southern gang of the engineers dug into the wilderness army surveyors blazed the trail no razors for this gang and as for uniforms they dress to suit themselves they fought mosquitoes flies and what-have-you but they did their job they located the center stakes for the Pioneer Road the surveyors knew where the road was supposed to go what their orders were to find a right-of-way that offered the least amount of trouble for the road builders coming on behind they never ran the road over anything they could go around then we went to work giant bulldozers followed right on the heels of the surveyors they smashed their way through the wilderness uprooting big and little trees without even batting an eye these 20-ton babies took everything along with them and left a path behind for us to make into a roll right behind them came the road drags filling in ruts and holes clearing out brush giving the path the first looks of a road then came the earth pushers rolling up mountains of dirt in front of them and leaving a level trail behind them some of it was fairly easy going but at times it was anything but a cinch when we had to chisel our way through solid rock Mountain Goats had nothing on us blocks of ice and frozen earth had to be carved out and broken up so that the road could go through after the pioneer Road had been cleared another survey was made to straighten out tough curbs and set up the road width and grade stakes we made the fills with giant Cheerios hauling as much as 16 cubic yards of dirt alone take a look at these man-sized tires you can take it from me this road would never have been built in record time if our machines cars and trucks hadn't had tires that could stand up under the toughest kind of beating tires ever took to get the road built in a hurry we use the heaviest equipment made and kept the machines rolling day and night right behind the carry all these funny-looking rollers stamped down the soft earth just like a flock of sheep let loose that's why they call them sheep's foot tampers they make a solid foundation for the gravel topdressing one lucky break we had was that gravel deposits were found right along the road where they could be loaded into trucks with power shovels we found plenty of gravel all along the highway our speeding gravel trucks splashed right through the shallow streams over the deeper rivers the engineers built Ponton bridges these bridges were strong enough to support the heavily loaded trucks as well as other Road building machinery later the Ponton bridges were replaced by heavy wooden bridges we were working against time because all of us knew with winter snows caught the road before we got it graveled thaws would make a mess of the whole job sometimes we had to build a bottom for the road out of logs and brush we got the logs by cutting down trees along the highway and right near where the corduroy logs were needed lumber for the bridges and culverts came from the same place but it took more than tractors and road building machinery and rubber to lick the wilderness it took men men who didn't know what it meant to say quit when we weren't fighting bought in ice we were fighting dust blinding clouds of it we had a where dust mask to protect our noses and throats but we took what we found and made a road out [Music] at the end of a day's work on the highway though nobody had to be coaxed to take a lift back to camp and when the cooks yelled come and get it we didn't lose any time lining up for chow all the road builders didn't grow beards but we all develop appetite and we had to learn the laundry business the hard way but gasoline powered washing machines took some of the drudgery out of keeping our lungs and heavies clean as the work went on advanced bases were set up along the road to keep us supplied with food and material truck convoys working out of these bases distributed supplies to our road building camps which moved ahead as worked on the road advance keeping the trucks and road building machinery in good working order was one big job working day in and day out in all kinds of weather machines broke down mechanics at the motor pools repaired them in rolling machine shops stripping parts from broken-down machines to keep the rest going tires were inspected regularly and repaired in all kinds of weather over snow and ice sand gravel and sharp rocks Jeep tires truck tires and the mammoth carry all tires showed that they could take it the highway winds through mountain scenery that takes your breath away it crosses rivers and skirts around the edges of beautiful mountain lakes past old glaciers it runs through heavy timber for many miles wide well drain highway built for year-round heavy fast traffic it's a supply line that brings our armed forces a continuous stream of supplies and reinforcements this is the kind of highway I helped fill and boy what I wouldn't give to come back here with a rod and gun or bring the wife and keep her a vacation trip after victory is won so that's the story of the Alaska Highway they said it couldn't be done but it was done the road was built and in record time and every one of the engineers surveyors road builders and the contractors who work with them has a right to be plenty proud of the job that was done the Alaska Highway is open [Music]