TRANSPORTATION METHODS IN ALASKA* 



By Captain George S. Gibbs 

 Signal Corps, U. S. Army 



IMAGINE, if you can, a country 

 which has none of the hundreds of 

 necessities of existence at hand and 

 few of the thousands of accessories to 

 industry — a country having a valuable 

 output of products, almost all of which 

 are useless to that country and are of 

 value only when carried to far-distant 

 lands. 



Such is Alaska — dependent upon 

 transportation for its very existence as a 

 habitation and equally dependent upon 

 transportation to give value to its ores 

 and its furs. Two expressions, heard 

 every day from Skaguay to Nome, tell 

 just how the Alaskan pioneer feels about 

 his position in this regard when he refers 

 to Alaska as "on the inside" and the rest 

 of the world as "on the outside." The 

 implied barrier is significant, and it exists 

 in fact, just as though the country were 

 surrounded by a great wall, impassable 

 for eight months in the year and none too 

 easily scaled during the remaining short 

 period. 



Of course the ports of Juneau, Skag- 

 uay, ' and Yaldes, and others on the 

 southeastern coast, are open the year 

 round, but neither freight nor passengers 

 are carried to or from the interior of 

 Alaska during the long winter season. A 

 small amount of United States mail mat- 

 ter is carried in and out regularly by 

 means of dog teams in relays, and each 

 year a few adventurous and hardy travel- 

 ers beat the season a few weeks by mak- 

 ing the overland trip on foot and with 

 dog team, cither via Skaguay or Yaldes. 



So great is the transformation from an 

 ice-bound, snow-covered, wind-swept 

 wilderness to a land covered with luxuri- 

 ous vegetation and traversed by streams 

 of navigable waters that the two seasons, 



summer and winter, suggest a convenient 



division of the methods of transportation. 



Railroads, in the few places where 



short sections have been built, are in 



" Foxy " 



One of the dogs belonging to the repair team at 

 the U S. Military Telegraph Sta'ion at Chena, 

 on the Tanana River, Alaska 



operation the year round, but with one 

 exception they serve only local interests. 

 Two short lines on the Seward Peninsula 

 run from Nome and Solomon, on the 



The photographs were taken by the author. 



