Delta Junction of the "Alcan" Highway

Delta Junction was the original completion point of the Alaskan Highway project. Construction began in March 1942 and was finished by the Army in November 1942. The road was later improved and finished by civilian contractors in March 1943. The road took more than 20,000 men and 11,000 machines to build and remains one of the only road connections from the United States mainland through Canada into the Alaskan Interior.

The ALCAN Highway (also known as the Alaskan or Alaska Highway) was built in eight months by the Army Corps of Engineers. Construction began March 8th of 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). This highway provided a land route for supplies and material during the war.

At the time, airbases in Canada and Alaska were the only way to get supplies to the US military in the interior of Alaska. Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US military feared that Alaska could be lost to the Japanese through the invasion of the Aleutian Islands. This would allow the Japanese to cut shipping supply lines and gain a foothold in Alaska which could be used to stage attacks on Canada and the United States.

The United States quickly requested permission from the Government of Canada to build a supply route that would seemingly connect the U.S. mainland to Alaska. With Canada’s consent, the US army began construction on the road from Dawson’s Creek in Canada’s British Columbia as a continuation of a railroad supply line. The Alaska Highway was built for military supply runs to go deep into the Alaskan interior at Fairbanks and was finished on November 20th of 1942.

This venture took over 20,000 men from civilian contractors to seven regiments of the Army Corps of Engineers to complete, after which bridges were improved along with the construction of eleven air bases in Canada and Alaska. With fuel being another scarce resource, the highway project ended up building its own oil field and refinery for the fuel to power all the equipment needed to build the road. The permanent road was finished by civilian contractors of the Utah Construction Company on October 13, 1943. The Alaskan Highway was opened to the public in 1948.

1. Department of the Army, Department of Defense. Archive.org. Alaska Highway. December 01, 1944. . https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.23437.

2. Mariner, Cosmos. HMBD.org. Delta Junction, Alaska Northern Terminus of the “Alcan” Highway. June 16, 2016. . https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=59840.