Railway Routes in Alaska 



167 



sources to warrant the cost of construc- 

 tion and operation, and the modern en- 

 gineer will build a railway almost any- 

 where. In this I do not intend to in- 

 dorse the policy, too often followed, of 

 railway location which is not preceded by 

 comprehensive geographic investigation. 

 Many railways have been based on routes 

 chosen by the old adage: "The Indian 

 followed the buffalo, the white man the 

 Indian, and the locomotive the white 

 man." As a consequence, nearly every 

 transcontinental line has made or is con- 

 templating changes of routes involving 

 the expenditure of millions of dollars 

 which might have been avoided by 

 proper exploration and survey. The 

 lesson has not yet been learned, however, 

 for recently a corporation proposing to 

 build a railway in Alaska, after spending 

 several hundred thousand dollars in con- 

 struction, abandoned the chosen route 

 for another. In this case a tenth part of 

 the money spent on what proved to be 

 worthless construction would have more 

 than paid for the necessary explorations 

 and surveys. 



It follows from the above that while 

 the demand for transportation between 

 certain localities may be such that a rail- 

 way will be built in spite of the physical 

 obstacles, yet economic location demands 

 the most careful adjustment to the 

 topography. 



RESOURCES TO BE DEVELOPED 



It is evident that a discussion of rail- 

 way routes must consider the resources 

 of the territory as well as its physical 

 features ; that is, on one hand, the possi- 

 bilities of traffic must be discussed; on 

 the other, the routes of approach. The 

 question of traffic again resolves itself 

 into statistics of existing commerce and 

 the foreshadowing of that to come from 

 undeveloped resources. 



In Alaska the problem is simplified by 

 the fact that the immediately available 

 resources to be developed by railway con- 

 struction are all of a mineral character. 

 I do not by this mean to decry the agri- 

 cultural possibilities of certain parts of 



the territory, but I do believe that these 

 may be almost neglected in the present 

 discussion, for the reason that these ara- 

 ble lands are too remote from centers of 

 population to yet compete with the more 

 accessible and fertile lands in the states. 

 The capitalists will certainly look to the 

 mines of precious metals and of coal to 

 recoup themselves for outlays on railway 

 construction. With the mining develop- 

 ment some agricultural progress will un- 

 questionably be made and eventually be 

 a source of traffic for the road. There 

 is no timber for export except along the 

 Pacific seaboard (see page 183). In 

 fact, much lumber is annually taken into 

 the interior, and this consumption is 

 likely to become greater, if the present 

 ravages by forest fires in the Yukon 

 Basin continue. 



The discussion of resources to be de- 

 veloped by railways, therefore, resolves 

 itself into a consideration of the mineral 

 wealth and its distribution. In 'other 

 words, it is a geologic problem. Though 

 the basal facts are very incomplete, yet 

 some salient features of the economic 

 geology are known, and these bear 

 directly on the problem of mineral re- 

 sources. It is not my purpose to describe 

 the geology of the territory, but I will 

 call your attention to the distribution of 

 certain terranes which carry minerals of 

 economic value. The rocks grouped to- 

 gether as undififerentiated Paleozoic, in- 

 cluding the gold-bearing horizons, occur 

 in three belts, one running parallel to the 

 Pacific seaboard, a second lying centrally 

 in the Yukon Province, and a third form- 

 ing the country rock of the major part 

 of the Seward Peninsula (see map, page 

 168). Of the $100,000,000 which repre- 

 sents in round numbers the total mineral 

 production of Alaska, over 98 per cent 

 has been taken from areas underlain by 

 these rocks. In southeastern Alaska 

 there is a well-defined contact between a 

 broad belt of intrusives and these meta- 

 morphic terranes, and this has been 

 proved to be the general locus of aurifer- 

 ous lodes. It should be noted that the 

 northern extension of this contact lies in 



