ALASKA HIGHWAY
GREAT ENGINEERING FEAT. STRATEGIC ROUTE OF HIGH IMPORTANCE. The United States-Alaska highway, opened a fortnight ahead of schedule, is a strategic route of the _ highest military importance, bringing the United States nearly 2000 miles closer to Japan by land. Running from Fort St John, in the Peace River region of British Columbia, through Fort Nelson and Whitehorse to the Alaskan boundary, and thence to Fairbanks, in midAlaska, the 1671-mile road has been made ready for traffic by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in less than eight months. The route has been described as carefully chosen to meet military needs. Its inland course seems as little vulnerable to attack as any route can be in these days of three-dimensioned warfare and is less liable to be blocked by snow than a road nearer the British Columbian coast would have been. It traverses less difficult passes through the Rockies and links the chain of airports constructed by the Canadian Government in their almost roadless northern territories with the American aerodromes in Alaska. The road is to be maintained by the Americans during the war; later, it will become a scenic and commercial route of great importance in the Canadian highway system. The officer in charge of the project is Brigadier-General William Morris Hoge, United States Engineers, who built the main road on Batan and won the Distinguished Service Cross for driving a bridge across the Meuse under fire during the Great War. Between early spring and autumn his men have " wrenched and hacked a highway across an almost uncharted wilderness of river, forest, mountain and bog in one of the biggest and toughest jobs American Army engineers have undertaken since they built the Panama Canal.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19421113.2.69
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1942, Page 6
Word count
Tapeke kupu
287ALASKA HIGHWAY Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1942, Page 6
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Times-Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.