Category: Transportation history

Alaska Railroad’s little Davenport steam engine traveled widely across North America

The little engine in the drawing is a Davenport 18-ton 0-4-0 ST steam locomotive. (The engine nomenclature refers to 0 leading wheels, 4 drive wheels, and 0 trailing wheels; with the ST indicating that...

House in Cordova is one of the few reminders of legendary Alaska pioneer, Jack Dalton

Jack Dalton, perhaps best-known for opening Southeast Alaska’s Dalton Trail in 1894-95, was a wanderer. During his 30-plus years in Alaska, his meanderings covered large swaths of Southeast and Southcentral Alaska. Dalton came to...

Potter Section House near Anchorage offers glimpse into history of Alaska Railroad

  Potter Section House as it looked in winter 2018-2019 Potter Section House is at Mile 115.3, Seward Highway, near the mouth of Turnagain Arm and just south of Potter Marsh. Sitting adjacent to...

College Station and the Toonerville Trolley

  College Station in the mid-1920s. The four miles between the University of Alaska and downtown Fairbanks offers little impediment to modern travelers. However, when the university’s predecessor, the Alaska College of Agriculture and...

Navy gambled on Chickaloon coal and lost

  Chickaloon bunkhouse at Alpine Historical Park   Chickaloon is a small community located just off the Glenn Highway, about 75 miles northeast of Anchorage. Prior to Western contact the area was occupied by...

Newly constructed Palmer Highway linked Anchorage to Matanuska Valley in 1936

  Kink River Bridge as it looked in 2017. This views is from the south side of the bridge looking north towards Palmer. When a New Deal agricultural resettlement project was established in the...

Old Caterpillar tractor from Manley still puttering along

In 1929, C.W. Cash, a sales representative for Northern Commercial Company, traveled through Interior Alaska visiting prospective customers. While at Manley Hot Springs, a small isolated community along the Tanana River, he met with...

Tok, Alaska–a community built for the open road

1962 Kenworth truck with Holmes model 750 25-ton wrecker seen in Tok in 2011 Tok, with 1300 residents, is the largest community in the Upper Tanana Valley in Eastern Interior Alaska. Athabascan Indians have...

Wheelmen pedaled winter trails during Yukon and Alaska gold rushes

Drawing of gold rush-era wheelman based on photo from Selid-Bassoc collection, University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives Many people view winter biking as a recent phenomenon. However, bicycles came north with gold-seekers over 100 years...

Eureka Lodge has served Glenn Highway travelers since road’s inception

  The original cabin at Eureka Lodge in 2013 The Glenn Highway, which stretches from Anchorage 179 miles northeast to the Richardson Highway, should perhaps have been named the Castner Highway. After all, Lt....