Opening Up the Country

In the early twentieth century, advocates of road building in Alaska argued that extending highways ahead of settlement would bring broad returns, with President Warren G. Harding in 1923 urging liberality toward roads, the Chitina Leader in 1913 suggesting that if Col. Wilds Richardson succeeded in building a boulevard in the interior country he might immortalize his name, and Valdez Trail engineer Joseph Kerr in 1900 emphasizing that the trail being engineered across the country would be among the most difficult engineering work undertaken.

Silver Springs, Alaska · United States