The Trans Alaska Pipeline: An Epic Construction Effort

Over three years of construction, about 70,000 people from widely varied backgrounds came together along an 800-mile corridor from the Arctic Ocean to Port Valdez to build the trans Alaska pipeline to unprecedented standards despite extreme climate, difficult terrain, and a tightly compressed schedule. It was the largest privately financed construction project ever undertaken anywhere, and Fairbanks served as a central staging area, with workers temporarily housed at an orientation center at Ft. Wainwright before assignment to 31 construction camps along the line. The first work began on April 29, 1974, when crews and equipment assembled north of the Yukon River to build the first road ever across Alaska's vast northern wilderness, an all-weather haul road completed that summer over 358 miles in 154 days. The first pipe was laid beneath the Tonsina River on March 27, 1975, and at the peak of construction in October that year, more than 28,000 workers and others were employed on the project. Crews laid pipe across tundra, over high mountains, and under or over 34 major waterways and about 800 other rivers and streams, confronting falling rock, snow slides, steep slopes, wind, cold, mosquitoes, rain, snow, hail, and threatening wildlife at places such as Atigun Pass, Thompson Pass, and Keystone Canyon. When the last pipeline weld was completed on May 31, 1977, the total cost had reached $8 billion, and the project had produced 800 miles of pipeline, eight pump stations, and a Marine Terminal at Valdez, all finished on schedule in just over three years. The first Prudhoe Bay oil entered the pipeline on June 20, 1977, ending the construction phase and leaving a system built to transport Alaska crude oil for America's energy needs.

Farmers Loop, Alaska · United States