Laurel Bill on Alaska Story Time with Aunt Phil, Alcan & Slim Williams

Laurel Bill on Alaska Story Time with Aunt Phil, Alcan & Slim Williams

Before the Alaska Canada Highway became a reality during World War II, a man with a vision blazed a trail through the wilderness to the Lower 48 in just under six months. Alaska author/historian Laurel Downing Bill shares the story of Clyde “Slim” Williams and his team of wolf dogs on this segment of Alaska Story Time with Aunt Phil.

Years before 10,000 U.S. soldiers battled mosquitoes, muskeg and permafrost to build that primitive road to Alaska, others had thought it feasible to connect the Last Frontier to the Lower 48. Veteran railroad man Edward H. Harriman proposed building a road from Chicago to the Bering Sea in 1899 after gold was discovered in Nome. But when the gold fields played out, so did his idea.

Donald MacDonald, a locating engineer with the Alaska Road Commission, had dreamed for years of an overland coastal route to Alaska from Seattle across British Columbia through the Yukon Territory to Fairbanks. He and the Automobile Highway Association helped finance Alaska prospector and trapper Clyde “Slim” Williams to make a trip over the proposed coastal route in 1932.

Williams left Fairbanks with a team of part-wolf dogs that November and followed crude maps drawn by MacDonald. Williams and his dog team trekked through the wilderness and made their way to Seattle in 5-1/2 months.

The next year, Williams rigged his sled with Model-T wheels and headed 2000 miles east to the Chicago World’s Fair, where he and his dogs were a big hit. He mushed on to Washington, D.C. and briefed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the proposal for a road. Years later, Eleanor Roosevelt would say that Williams was a most vocal advocate for the Alaska Highway.

Williams again made a trip south in 1939 to gain support for the highway. He and adventurer John Logan, along with their dog, Blizzard, left Fairbanks on May 14 on motorcycles and headed down the same path Williams had traveled a few years earlier. They covered the 2,300 miles to Seattle in 6-1/2 months. Williams later said that he and Logan never missed a meal – but sometimes they got a few meals behind.

But it was the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941, that made building that road a reality. The first train carrying American troops arrived at Dawson Creek on Mar. 2, 1942 and the troops laid 1,200 miles of primitive road through Canada and more than 200 miles through Alaska in record time – less than nine months!

This episode aired on CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA Channel 11 Daybreak on Nov. 23, 2015.

Alaska history
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