Local Men Help Build a Road to Alaska

Although I had heard of the AlCan or Alaska Highway long ago, I had no idea that Iowans had played any part in building this vital road until I heard from Wayne Olson, whose dad, Omar Olson (1903-1969), joined other Poweshiek County men who went north to work on the highway in the early 1940s. Once I started looking into the connections, however, the whole endeavor caught my imagination: how did Iowans come to take part in this massive project, and how did they adjust to working in the far North? Today's post follows the experiences and contributions of Iowans in building the Alaska Highway in the middle of World War II.

Map Detailing the Course of the Alcan (Alaska) Highway
(http://www.thealaskadream.com/rv-alaska/the-alaska-highway/)

###

Since at least the 1920s there had been talk about forging a road through the forests and tundra of western Canada and Alaska, but only World War II brought urgency and agreement to the idea. After the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the idea of an invasion of Alaska grew terribly credible, persuading the American and Canadian governments to embark on building a road into Alaska. The Canadians granted the right-of-way and the Americans agreed to construct and finance building of the highway; six months after the war, they agreed, Canada would assume control and maintenance of the road. Consequently, in 1942 some 10,000 men from the Army Corps of Engineers along with seven US Army regiments (three of which were African American in the still segregated US Army) cleared a rough path from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska (R. E. Royall, The Alaska Highway: Second Year [Washington, DC, 1944, p. 1). Ramrodding through dense forest and bridging numerous rivers, the highway builders declared the 1500-mile road "complete" (if still quite rough) by October 25, 1942.

Even in 1942 a large number of civilians (about 7500 altogether) joined the adventure, but during 1943 the Public Roads Administration (precursor of today's Federal Highway Administration) organized more than fifty American and Canadian road-building and bridge-building construction companies—who employed more than 14,000 civilian employees—to improve, widen, and stabilize the road (ibid., p. 70), which was officially declared "open" in November 1943.

Photograph of the 1942 Iowa Construction Chiefs;
Montezuma's V. L. Lundeen is third from right, second row
("Iowa's AEF—Alaskan Expeditionary Force," Central Constructor, 20, no. 2 [July 1942]:8)

Thanks largely to the efforts of Iowa Senator Clyde L. Herring (1879-1945), Iowa construction firms gained a share of this monumental project. C. F.  Lytle Co. of Sioux City and Green Construction Company of Des Moines combined to win a management contract which permitted them to recruit seventeen Iowa construction firms, each of which had the task of working on one section of the 300+ miles at the Alaska end of the road. Among the Iowa sub-contractors were William Horrabin Construction of Iowa City, Duesenberg, Inc. of Clear Lake, and Van Buskirk Construction of Hawarden. Most important of the Iowa sub-contractors for Grinnell was V. L. Lundeen Construction of Montezuma, which dispatched crews from Poweshiek County in both 1942 and 1943 ("Iowa's AEF—Alaskan Expeditionary Force," Central Constructor 20, no. 2 [July 1942]:6).

Payments to Sub-Contractors of Lytle & Green Construction Group (The Alaska Highway: An Interim Report from the Committee on Roads, House of Representatives [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946], p. 45)

Contractors sought workers all over Iowa. Contracts prescribed that volunteers must be between the ages of 25 and 55, but some teenagers found their way north anyway. In order to avoid draining potential military recruits, the project sought men who were physically fit but held 3-A classification in the selective service registration, and all volunteers had to have a letter of release from their local draft board (Grinnell Herald Register, June 29, 1942). The overwhelming majority of volunteers were male, but small numbers of women also took part in the adventure, taking "stenographic and clerical jobs in camps along the rugged Alaskan Highway" (Muscatine Journal, June 29, 1943).

Over the two years of work in Alaska Vern Lundeen (1900-1958) employed about 130 local men, twenty of whom came from Grinnell (a few more in 1942 than in 1943); two Grinnell men, Roy Heiniker and Harold Gerard (1903-1983), went north both years, but most of the Grinnell volunteers went only once. Lundeen, who resided in Montezuma, recruited the largest number of workers from his hometown: nine Montezuma men joined the expedition in 1942 and eighteen in 1943 (four men, including Lundeen, worked in Alaska both years). Oskaloosa had the next largest contingent, but more than thirty other towns—mostly in Poweshiek County—sent at least one worker north. In addition, Lundeen hired a half-dozen specialists—"scoop" operators and big machine mechanics—from outside Iowa.

Newspaper Photograph of the 1942 Poweshiek County Men Prepared to Depart Grinnell
(Grinnell Herald-Register, June 29, 1942; special thanks to Monique Shore for taking his photograph from the archived copies of the newspaper)

Both years the local men began their adventure at the Grinnell Depot, where they boarded special trains that took them first to Minneapolis, and then onward into Edmonton, Alberta Province. Ernest Badger (1909-1970), for example, told readers of the Grinnell Herald-Register that his train left Grinnell June 26, 1942, reaching Calgary on the 28th. It took five days to get the men on the next leg of the journey to Edmonton where they spent another eight days, "just loafing and sightseeing" (Grinnell Herald-Register, August 24, 1942). Finally, on July 12th they flew on to Alaska, landing near Fairbanks, since the Lundeen men had as their assignment a section of the road in Alaska close to the Canada border.

Some of the 1943 Alaska Highway Volunteers at Grinnell Depot, Awaiting Their Train North (June 1943):
Omar Olson in hat at far right; John Queen, then from Oskaloosa but later partner with Olson in Grinnell furniture store, Queen & Olson, is fifth from right, partly visible; photo courtesy of Wayne Olson)

The long flights—ten or eleven hours in airplanes most of whose interiors had been cleared out for hauling freight—proved sickening for some men, especially for those who had never before been in an airplane. The men also had the novelty and excitement of seeing the Canadian Rockies and the Alaska Range, pristine mountainous landscapes to contrast with Iowa's plains back home. Owen Lawson (1923-1989), for example, a nineteen-year-old Jefferson man, in July wrote his parents about the stunning sights he had encountered: 

We went through the mountains, and it was a very beautiful sight. All the mountains are snow-capped and I saw an ice glacier across the river ... Coming to camp, we saw a great big brown bear, and, man, was he a big one—for he was way over six feet...That trip...through the mountains was the coldest I ever had on the 5th of July (Jefferson Herald, July 16, 1942).

Bern Brunsting (1922-2001), a Sioux Center volunteer, was similarly enthusiastic:

The trip was very thrilling. The only real way to see the mountains is from the air. The spectacular sight can only be told in travel folders; I'll not attempt it. The fifty-foot spruce trees look like a well-kept lawn. They don't look much larger than blades of grass from 15,000 feet. It seems funny to look at the clouds from the top. Try it some time and see how beautiful they are...[Our trip] took us about 10 hours, ten of the most thrilling and interesting hours I've ever spent in my life (Sioux Center News, July 16, 1942).

Even though it was July, Alaska's 1942 summer weather surprised the Iowa men with four frosts (Grinnell Herald-Register, August 24, 1942). Overall, however the Alaska weather proved satisfactory to most. Peter Conroy, who worked in Alaska for Clear Lake's Duesenberg Company and regularly posted reports home to the Mason City Globe-Gazette, told readers in early August that "the weather here now is just like the weather in Iowa in late fall—shorter days, cold nights and frequent rains." Despite the mosquitoes and the occasional chill, some men on hot days would work without shirts (August 15, 1942). Ernie Badger, the Grinnell man, was more reserved, telling readers that he liked the country "when the weather is good" (Grinnell Herald-Register, August 24, 1942).

Undated Photograph of V. L. Lundeen (center, white shirt) and Crew With Alaska Women
(Duesenberg, Alaska Highway Expeditionary Force, p. 143)

Vern Lundeen, writing from Calgary in 1942, described the Canadians as "very friendly and congenial" (Montezuma Republican, July 13, 1942), a sentiment many Poweshiek County men repeated. In Alaska, however, the Iowans encountered indigenous people, with whom they unconsciously shared their germs (with devastating effect) and whom they saw with varying perspectives. Vern Lundeen thought that the women he met looked "grand," "just as nature meant them to [look]. They look so pure but I guess the reason is the high tax on cosmetics and all unnecessary items" (Mount Pleasant News, August 21, 1942). Bern Brunsting had a different take, telling his family that he had "seen some of those Eskimos and they're not so hot" (Sioux Center News, July 16, 1942). Apparently the indigenous peoples responded warmly to the Americans, but overall the results of the encounter were not so positive. In 1992, when Alaskans were organizing a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the highway, a representative of the Yukon Indian Council (probably should be Council of Yukon First Nations) noted that, "'because of the things the highway brought'—disease, alcohol, a cash economy and other things that permanently changed the Natives' nomadic lifestyle—'we felt we couldn't celebrate it'" (Cedar Rapids Gazette, October 25, 1992).

Each construction company had a main camp on its assigned section of the road, and erected smaller camps along the way, as workers made progress on the road. In some places, tents served as sleeping quarters until more permanent barracks arrived. Some of the barracks sent north came from dis-assembled Civilian Conservation Corps buildings, but quonset huts or other structures served elsewhere.

Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 24, 1942.

Ernie Badger said that his group had begun life in Alaska in a log cabin, but had soon transferred to new barracks fitted out with bunk beds grouped in twos. Badger told Grinnell readers that he and fellow-Grinnellian Oliver Patrick (1503 Elm St.) occupied the lower bunks while Willis Potts (d. 1984) and Warren Grooms (1912-1955), also from Grinnell, slept above them (Grinnell Herald-Register, August 24, 1942). 

Photograph of some of the Poweshiek County men playing cards; Vern Lundeen is 2nd from left
(Engineering News-Record, vol. 130 [January 21, 1943]:91)

The work day in Alaska was a long one. In 1942 

most of the contractors worked two 11-hour shifts a day, seven days a week...Work, work and more work was the only program—day and night, seven days a week...Entertainment was simply non-existent. There was no recreational program provided for soldiers or civilians (Harold W. Richardson, "Alcan—America's Glory Road: Part II—Supply, Equipment and Camps," Engineering News-Record, vol. 129[December 31, 1942]:42/914). 

The pay was not bad, especially if compared to Depression-era pay checks. Truck-drivers earned between $1.20 and $1.55 an hour; tractor drivers and grader operators earned a bit more—$1.60/hour—and power shovel operators received $2/hour. Most unskilled labor received just under $1/hour, although everyone earned time-and-a-half for overtime. The Public Roads Administration had established these rates for all contractors on the project (The Alaska Highway: An Interim Report from the Committee on Roads, House of Representatives [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946], p. 180). 

The Employment Contract for Omar Olson with Lundeen Construction Co.
(Courtesy of Wayne Olson)

Supervisors received monthly salaries, independent of the number of hours worked. Omar Olson, for example, who signed a contract as Camp Superintendent in April 1943, received $400 per month. Charles Lear, who was hired as head cook, received $295/month (Lundeen Collection, Poweshiek County Historical and Genealogical Society Montezuma, IA). From each month's totals, the contractors subtracted taxes as well as a charge for room and board—between $1.50 and $2 per day (Harold W. Richardson, "Alcan—America's Glory Road. Part II: Supply, Equipment and Camps," Engineering News-Record, vol. 129 [December 31, 1942]:42/914). The resulting paychecks were not especially fat, but without many places where the men might spend the money, they managed to save or send home substantial amounts.

Undated Photograph of Bulldozer Flattening Spruce Forest to Forge Primitive Road
(J. David Rogers, "Construction of the Alcan Highway in 1942," https///web.mst.edu/~rogersda/umrcourses/ge342/Alcan%20Highway-revised.pdf.png)

Much of the Canadian section of the road required flattening dense forest and devising bridges to ford the numerous rivers and creeks. In Alaska where most of the Iowa men worked, the chief complication for building the road was muskeg. A kind of peat that decomposed over time, muskeg provided a thick layer of insulation that kept the permafrost beneath it frozen. However, as temperatures rose in the warm season, and especially once contractors tried to move the organic material to fashion a roadway, the earth beneath the vegetation melted and disintegrated, gradually swallowing heavy machinery. Contractors often resorted to creating corduroy roads over the muskeg, helping preserve the insulation and distribute the weight of vehicles. 

Photograph of Bulldozer Captured by Muskeg
(Rogers, "Construction of Alcan Highway)

Like most of the contractors, Lundeen provided his own equipment, for which the government paid rent. But getting all that machinery to the work site (a job coordinated by Doak Construction of Des Moines) proved difficult; most of the caterpillar tractors, scrapers, and other items traveled part of the way by rail, then by sea, and then again by rail. Some of the machinery was trucked north, an exhausting if less complex delivery ("Iowans Again to Work on Alaska Road," Des Moines Register, March 28, 1943). Delays inevitably attached to the shipments, whether over land or sea, slowing construction progress. For example, only in mid-August 1942 did the Duesenberg group from Clear Lake collect the team's machinery at the Valdez docks (Mason City Globe-Gazette, August 25, 1942). 

Undated Photograph of Lundeen Men Loading Cat and Scraper for Shipment to Alaska
(Alaska Highway Expeditionary Force, p. 36).

While waiting for the arrival of the rest of the Lundeen heavy machinery in 1942, Ernie Badger was driving a "Ford gravel truck" (Grinnell Herald Register, August 24, 1942). Robert McLaughlin (1901-1993), a Newton resident who signed up with the Lundeen crew in 1943 (and who passed his last years at Grinnell's Mayflower Community), was also a gravel truck driver, helping create a hard surface for the improved road. As he recounted to Herbert C. Lanks on a night-time run to and from a gravel pit, McLaughlin had been a watchmaker back home, but, his doctor having ordered him to work out-of-doors, he had decided to join the Alcan Highway effort. So, there in Alaska's summer darkness an Iowa jeweler drove a five-ton truck back and forth along the emerging roadway (Highway to Alaska [New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1944], p. 163).

Some of the construction machinery on-site
(Engineering News-Record, January 14, 1943, p. 63/131)

Under the difficult conditions of work, often with low temperatures and rough terrain, the machinery frequently broke down, slowing the highway's advance (Richardson, "Part II," 35-40/908-912; idem, "Alcan—America's Glory Road: Part III: Construction Tactics," Engineering News-Record 130[January 14, 1943]:136/68). Ray C. Haman, whose father was part of the Duesenberg gang, traveled north along the highway in 1943, and in a self-published diary of his journey tells readers how often he was needed to help repair machinery (Adventure on the Alcan [Alaska Highway] [1945]). The rarity of spare parts led to cannibalizing disabled machines.

As hard as the work was and as exciting as the adventure might have been, there were, of course, costs. Experts have concluded that, in addition to the millions of dollars expended on the highway, some 30 men died during construction, including twelve soldiers who drowned when a ferry capsized in May 1942 at Charlie Lake near Ft. St. John.  According to the Lytle and Green 1942 project manager, civilian road-builders posted a better safety record.

Iowa contractors established a magnificent record. One man contracted pneumonia...three men suffered broken legs on bridge construction and one a broken arm...There were a few back injuries and hernias, none serious... (O. W. Crowley, "Iowans Work on the Alcan Highway," Central Constructor 20, no. 7 [December 1942]:12-13).

Milton Duesenberg offered other examples of injuries workers sustained:

Although most men remained healthy...there were cases of extreme homesickness, nervous breakdowns, food poisoning, and accidents. One sawmill hand lost his life when a tree fell on him, and a bridgeman had to be transported to the Fairbanks hospital for treatment of a broken collar bone and several ribs...Cleo Edgar of the Sears crew lost the sight in his left eye while repairing a broken cable...and a mechanic was knocked cold when he miscued while driving a tack pin and it...hit him in the head (Alaska Expeditionary Force, pp. 157, 159).

One of the injured was a Grinnell man, John Collum (1896-1978), who was part of the 1943 Lundeen work force; when the truck he was driving went over a fifty-foot embankment he suffered serious back injury (Newton Daily News, August 2, 1943).

By mid-October 1942 a rough, "pioneer" highway had been cleared all along the 1500+ miles with timber bridges fording most of the several hundred rivers and streams. A year later, the entire road had been widened, some of the worst obstacles improved, and most bridges made permanent. With the end of construction in sight, some of the volunteers headed home in September, but most Iowans departed Alaska in mid-October. Unlike the trip north, the route home for most of the Iowa men required a voyage of several days from Valdez to Seattle, bringing sea sickness to some. From Seattle, most took trains back to the midwest where they later appeared before the local Rotary, Kiwanis, and other organizations to share stories of their Alaska adventure (Mason City Globe-Gazette, October 30, 1942). A few men chose to drive home over the road to which they and thousands of others had given so much. For example, two Newton men, Forrest Warner and Robert McLaughlin, drove south from Fairbanks all the way to Edmonton (Newton Daily News, November 19, 1943), then took more conventional transport the rest of the way.

Mason City Globe-Gazette, November 13, 1942

Back home in Iowa, relatives of the Alaska Highway workers could learn details of their husbands, fathers, children and neighbors through the letters that most men sent regularly. However, since the authors of these letters knew that their missives were censored, the recipients could never be sure how close to reality the letters hewed. Fortunately, there were other routes by which to learn what life was like for the Iowa men in Alaska. As my report here shows, local newspapers often published letters from those working on the highway, thereby spreading news, however censored, of life up North. Then, in late January 1943 the Des Moines radio station WHO broadcast a report by H. W. Richardson, western editor of Engineering News-Record, who reported on the "Twelve Hundred Iowa Fighters in Construction" (Central Constructor, 20, no. 9[February 1943]:5). Perhaps there were similar broadcasts in other Iowa cities.

Ames Daily Tribune, August 14, 1943

Hollywood also tried to tap into public interest in the Alcan adventure, releasing in summer 1943 a feature film called "Alaska Highway," starring Richard Arlen (1899-1976) and Jean Parker (1915-2005). According to news reports, "the picture is full of thrills and breathtaking moments," depicting "a landslide, a forest fire, toppling death-dealing trees and all sorts of unexpected dilemmas" (Ames Daily Tribune, August 14, 1943). Iowans might also find in their newspapers advertisements that encouraged them to visit Alaska over the newly-built highway once the war was over.

Conoco Newspaper Advertisement, Burlington Hawk-Eye Gazette, July 9, 1943

###

Most analysts agree that forging a road through the wilds of British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska in the 1940s was well worth the cost and effort. If originally defined as fulfilling a narrowly-military goal, helping defend Alaska against the anticipated attack of the Japanese, the Alaska Highway in peacetime helped integrate Alaska into the Lower 48 and brought the American and Canadian economies closer, although the impact upon indigenous peoples was much less happy. 

But what about the men who went north to build this road? What did it do for them? Breaking through the forest and permafrost of the North, the Iowans could imitate the nineteenth-century pioneers who first made their way into the plains that became Iowa. Many of the project veterans regarded their Alaska experience as life-changing. Walter Mason, looking back on his experiences fifty years earlier, told a reporter in 1992 that "the road's part of me and I'm a part of it...I've had a number of experiences, but none more profound than that" (Cedar Rapids Gazette, October 25, 1992). Iowa City resident Bob Russell told an interviewer, "It was a wonderful experience. I loved it," despite—or perhaps exactly because of—the hardships (Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 6, 1987). 

Not all the volunteers were so enthusiastic, but the fact that many obituaries of Alaska Highway veterans mention their brief adventure in Alaska is telling. For example, when Clifford Benton, Jr. (1924-2008) died in Tiburon, California in 2008, his obituary—full of accomplishments in real estate and insurance, outstanding volunteer contributions to suicide prevention, and years of singing with men's choruses in California—began the recollection of achievement by remembering that "his first job at the age of 17 was building the Alaska Highway...." Similarly, when former Grinnellian Warren Baker (1912-1984) died in Abilene, Texas in 1984, forty years after his Alaska experience, his obituary recalled that "During World War II he worked on the Alcan Highway Project." Likewise, the obituary of Omar Olson (1903-1969), who farmed, worked as a traveling salesman, and co-owned a successful Grinnell furniture store during a career of more than forty years, recalled that he "worked on the Alcan Highway with the Lundeen Construction Co." 

Eighty years after the first Iowans traveled north to work on the Alaska Highway, living memories of that war-time experience have melted away. Other happenings, including, of course, the enormously significant moments of war in Europe and Asia, have outshone the collective memory of the highway project. But for the many Iowa men who tamed the wilds between Alberta and Fairbanks, the Alaska Highway was an important milestone. As the eighteen-year-old Harlan volunteer, Gordon Phipps, put it: "I'll be a man when I get out of this country" ("Caught Salmon in his Pants," Central Constructor, vol. 20, no. 3 [August 1942]:8).

###

If you are interested in learning more about the construction of the Alaska Highway, you might find the Alaska documentary interesting and helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3J80p365vY.  The 67-minute Hollywood feature film, Alaska Highway, is also available for free on the internet: https://archive.org/details/AlaskaHighway. There are also numerous official and unofficial materials available on the world wide web.