It is said that everything is big in the Yukon, including the largest mountain mass and non-polar icefield in the world. Anyone who has been to Whitehorse, capital city of Yukon Territory, with a current population of 21,000, would agree with that - especially anyone who had anything to do with the construction of the now legendary Alaska Highway, celebrating its 50th birthday this year.
Warwick C. Palfreyman, known to local business associates as Bill, is a bona fide expert on the highway.Better known to most Utahns as the 20-year state director of Industrial development, Palfreyman back in 1942 was the 28-year-old adjutant to commanding general William Hoge, charged with the administration of the Whitehorse headquarters of the Alaska Highway - officially known as the Canada-Alaska Military Highway, and unofficially known as Alcan.
He also wrote the official army history of the project.
Palfreyman is not the only one who is excited about the anniversary. Government officials from Alaska to British Columbia have launched a yearlong celebration of the 1,600-mile highway, considerably upgraded since World War II, and known today as the "last great driving adventure in North America."
In the United States, the post office is selling commemorative stamps in honor of its completion, which is on terrain among the most rugged on the North American continent.
According to Canadian authorities, there are still short sections of the original road with gravel loops and wooden bridges, but "the Alaska Highway is more a road through wilderness than a wilderness road," and it is almost entirely paved. It is a montage of spectacular scenery, sprawling grainfields, classic northern forest, wildlife and wildflowers, and towering mountains.
But it is still a two-lane snake of a road, twisting from Dawson Creek in northeast British Columbia through the Yukon gold-rush country to Delta Junction, just two hours short of Fairbanks. Technically, Delta Junction is the end of the highway, since the final 98 miles of road existed before the highway was built.
If you want to participate in a road rally to help celebrate the 50th birthday, you still have time, because it runs from Sept. 20 to Sept. 26.
Today you still drive it mostly in isolation - there are no radio stations and very few gas stations, and any kind of mechanical failure at all can delay you for days. The highway, built in 1942 by American soldiers and civilian contractors for the World War II defense of Alaska, is considered one of the greatest engineering feats of its day. The one-lane unsurfaced road stretched uncomfortably over mountains, muskeg, rivers and forests.
Although a formidable task, the construction of the road took just over eight months. It was begun in March 1942 and dedicated in November of that year, allowing military vehicles to travel its entire length. The road was opened to the general public in 1948.
The defense department had intended to build a road to Alaska for decades but didn't do it until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
U.S. authorities, forcefully struck with the need for a land route from the lower United States to the Yukon or Alaska, determined to build a highway using American troops and equipment. It had become military necessity.
Palfreyman, a young Springville native who had worked in southern Utah, Nevada and Wyoming building roads and bridges for W.W. Clyde Construction Co. while pursuing an agronomy degree at BYU, was caught in the middle.
He enlisted in an engineers unit of the National Guard in Springville in May 1939, not realizing that he would do any more than attend Monday-night guard drills and two-week summer camps. "Then when Hitler and Mussolini started rattling around, we found ourselves coming up to Camp Williams for special drills."
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt mobilized National Guardsmen all over the United States in September 1940, Utah units realized they might be next.
Palfreyman married Ione Averett in January 1941, and six weeks later his Guard unit was activated to California. Within a few weeks he had been notified that he was being transferred to the 18th engineers at Vancouver barracks, Washington, evidently because of his background in construction.
Within days of arriving in Vancouver, Palfreyman was on his way by boat to Skagway, Alaska, then by railroad to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, "a sleepy little frontier town," then claiming a population of 800 people, to help build the Alaska Highway.
Little did he know it was a tenure that would last 31 months. "We marched a couple of miles outside of town and cut a hole in the woods with axes and started the Alaska Highway."
His first son, Richard, was born while he was up there, and Palfreyman didn't see him until the baby was 5 months old.
Palfreyman was one of 11,500 troops working on 11,000 pieces of equipment in a massive effort to overcome nearly insurmountable logistical problems. The command was divided into two sectors. The Fort St. Johns sector on the south included 600 miles, and the Whitehorse sector on the north, 1,000 miles.
Communications and supply were difficult because of the absence of a railroad and an airport. "We had two airplanes up there - one with wheels and one a float plane to land on the Yukon River. The float plane was more valuable than the wheel plane. You couldn't even take out mail without using the float plane. In the wintertime we took off the floats and put on skis so it could land on ice or snow."
General Hoge had to go out with trappers and a bush plane to locate the route. "He had a heck of a job. How do you get over this pass or skirt this lake?"
According to Palfreyman, "This was a pioneer road. This was no interstate. It was something to get a vehicle through so you could open up this severe, rugged country. It included timber bridges over the streams, and decayed vegetable matter covered up permafrost, ground that was permanently frozen. We had pile drivers and had to cut our own pile and drive the pile across a stream. As we put bulldozers in there, we found that if you disturbed that muskeg - spongy-like peatmoss - it was insulating that ice underneath. So if you cleared away the brush and trees to make a road, that permafrost would melt, and you would get a sea of mud."
So the highway went wherever it could, around muskeg, and where it had to go - curving and following steep inclines. The early roughness earned it the reputation as a "junkyard for American cars."
The military troops cut their own bridge timber out of the forest, and "the trees there are not redwoods. Due to severe temperatures, the trees were relatively small." At night, they slept in tents, no matter what the weather - and the temperature varied from 90 degrees in the summer to 75 degrees below zero in the winter.
The weather was not only hard on the troops, but the natives in the Yukon were "pretty unhealthy," according to Palfreyman's memory, "because they didn't get fresh vegetables. Their diet was primarily meat. During the summer you got sun nearly 24 hours a day. Vegetables would spring up in certain areas. But these people out in the woods were not farmers. They were rugged. They lived off the land, but they were not fine, physical specimens."
The troops' diet wasn't much better, rations in spring and summer being especially poor. While working 10-16 hour days, they had to be satisfied with Vienna sausage, chili con carne and corned beef hash at virtually every meal. Eventually, they got some relief when shipments of dehydrated foods arrived.
Palfreyman remembers the first time one of his troops died. A lieutenant had rolled over in a jeep and was killed.
"I was 28 years old and I didn't know what to do. We had a body. We didn't have any morticians. So I called our medic, Major Silberman. I said, `Will you take care of it?' To my distress, he said, `No.' He said, `Medics take care of troops as long as they're alive. When they die, we're through with them.' So I looked up army regulations and found to my great joy that the quartermaster was responsible for taking care of bodies."
The quartermaster reluctantly agreed, but even after they bought a $30 pine box from the general store they couldn't bury the body because the ground was frozen. "We didn't wait till spring. We built a fire to try to thaw it out, sent some troops with a jackhammer, and the funeral depended on when you got the hole dug. It was very primitive."
Palfreyman recalls 23 soldiers dying during the construction process.
Gen. Hoge was held in high regard. "I was fortunate enough to be in charge of the administration of his headquarters and slept in a tent next to his. The headquarters was located in an old deserted Royal Canadian Mounty building, a big two-story house. After the road was completed, I became the executive officer of the post at Whitehorse."
Palfreyman wrote in his history that the engineering skill needed to complete the highway had been exaggerated, but it was, he said, "one of the outstanding demonstrations of the fortitude, perseverance and indomitable spirit of the American soldier."
Although building a road in this rugged country was not pleasant, Palfreyman, who received a Legion of Merit for his contribution, today remembers it fondly. He even preferred it as a way to fulfill his military service.
"I never shot at anyone and no one ever shot at me."