(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Route Description
Alaska Highway 4 is 368 miles (562 km) long and runs from Valdez to Delta
Junction.
It is marked as Alaska Route 4 from Valdez to Delta Junction and as Alaska Route
2 from there to Fairbanks. It is also connects segments of Alaska Route 1
between the Glenn Highway and the Tok Cut-Off. It was the first major road built
in Alaska.
A pack trail from the port at Valdez to Eagle, a distance of about 409 miles
(660 km), was built in 1898 by the U.S. Army to provide an "all-American" route
to the Klondike gold fields. After the rush ended, the Army kept the trail open
in order to connect its posts at Fort Liscum, in Valdez, and Fort Egbert, in
Eagle.
The Fairbanks gold rush in 1902, and the construction of a WAMCATS telegraph
line along the trail in 1903, made the Valdez-to-Eagle trail one of the most
important access routes to the Alaska Interior, so in 1910, the Alaska Road
Commission upgraded it to a wagon road. The head of the project was U.S. Army
General Wilds P. Richardson, for whom the highway was later named. During the
construction, the government hired failed gold prospectors as well as regular
construction workers. The income from this work allowed many of the prospectors
to leave Alaska. Several roadhouses now on the National Register of Historic
Places were constructed along the route at this time.
The rise of motorized travel led the road to be upgraded to automobile
standards in the 1920s. To finance continued maintenance and road construction,
the Alaska Road Commission instituted tolls for commercial vehicles in 1933 of
up to $175 per trip, which were collected at the Tanana River ferry crossing at
Big Delta. When the tolls were further increased in 1941 to boost business for
the Alaska Railroad, disgruntled truckers nicknamed "gypsies" started a rogue
ferry service in order to evade the toll.
The Alaska and Glenn highways, built during World War II, connected the rest
of the continent and Anchorage to the Richardson Highway at Delta Junction and
Glennallen respectively, allowing motor access to the new military bases built
in the Territory just prior to the war. The bridge at Big Delta, the last
remaining gap, was built as part of the Alaska Highway project.
The southern end was open during summers only until 1950, when a freight
company foreman who lived near the treacherous Thompson Pass plowed the snow
himself for an entire season to prove the route could be used year-round. The
highway was paved in 1957.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, bulit in 1973-1977, mostly parallels the
highway from Fairbanks to Valdez.
