EXHIBIT No. 6 DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION-THE ALASKA RAILROAD Crown Point, mile post 25. Moose Pass, mile post 29. McKinley Park, mile post 348. Clear, mile post 392. Nenana mile post 412. Farbanks, mile post 470. Writer. Moose Creek 299.50 $122,219.50 299.50 Tanana. 59.81 Eska THE ALASKA RAILROAD By Edwin M. Fitch EXHIBIT NO. 7 Three Presidents of the United States each had a share in the creation of The Alaska Railroad. President Taft recommended its construction with Federal funds in 1913. President Wilson chose its present location for the 470 miles from Seward to Fairbanks in 1915. President Harding commemorated the Railroad's initial completion by driving the golden spike at Nenana, Alaska in 1923. These were Federal beginnings, however, whereas the Railroad was first established as a private business venture ten years before President Taft made his 1913 recommendation. Overcoming the Wilderness As the Territory of Alaska was making its transition from the 19th to the 20th century, it occurred to no one that Alaska shippers would be served by a major railroad only through an Act of Congress. In 1900 a dozen or more private railroads were in various stages of planning, construction, and operation in the Territory. Only one of these, the White Pass and Yukon, completed in 1901 from Skagway to Whitehorse, was successful enough to preserve its existence and its identity down through the years. The White Pass and Yukon Route was an ocean-rail-river operation (now married to motor transport as well) that was inspired by the gold rush to the Canadian Klondike. The gold fever that began in the Klondike in 1896 inevitably spread to Alaska. There was a strike on the beaches of Nome in 1898 and another in the Fairbanks area in 1902. Both of these discoveries were directly responsible for generating enthusiasm for the building of a railroad from the warm water ports of southwestern Alaska to the interior. The Alaska Railroad began in 1903 as the privately-financed Alaska Central Railway. It was projected from Seward on the Kenai Peninsula, around Turnagain Arm and the head of Cook Inlet, to the coal fields of the Matanuska Valley and to the gold mines and gold streams near Fairbanks. Financially, the little railroad was a dismal failure, however spectacular 1. The Copper River and Northwestern Railroad was privately built from Cordova 195 miles to a tremendous copper find at Kennicott. It was a successful railroad until 1938 when, after bringing out more than $200,000,000 in copper ore and concentrates, the copper ores gave out and it was abandoned. its engineering aspects. It was bankrupt in 1908, re-emerged as the Alaska Northern Railway in 1910, and never reached further than Kern Creek on Turnagain Arm, 71 rail miles from Seward. At no time were the Alaska Central and its successor, the Alaska Northern, able to earn even out-ofpocket expenses. Tracks, bridges, buildings and docks were not adequately maintained, and, by 1915, the Railroad was hardly in operating condition except for light, gasoline-driven equipment, used from Seward to mile 47 when snow or slides did not interfere. During this period the United States Congress, disillusioned by privaterailroad financial scandals in the 48 States and unwilling to continue a policy of land grants to pioneer railroads, refused to come to the aid of distressed railroad ventures in Alaska. Nevertheless, Congress deemed it outrageous that a Territory twice the size of Texas should, for all practical purposes, be without a railroad. President Taft called for government construction in 1913 after a Congressionally-authorized Railroad Commission had surveyed potential routes and had suggested that Federal financing and ownership would substantially reduce railroad capital costs. The Alaska Railroad's Enabling Act Congress accepted the views of the Alaska Railroad Commission and the President and passed the Act of March 12, 1914 (38 Stat. 305), which empowered and directed the President to construct and operate a railroad to connect "one or more of the open Pacific Ocean harbors on the southern coast of Alaska with the navigable waters in the interior of Alaska". The author of the bill and one of its most influential supporters was a Congressman without a vote--James Wickersham, Delegate from Alaska. Under the Act, President Wilson appointed an Alaskan Engineering Commission in the spring of 1914 to conduct the location surveys which it authorized. By Executive Order, this Commission was made responsible to the Secretary of the Interior. Lieutenant (later Colonel) Frederick Mears was made Chairman; the other two members were Thomas Riggs, Jr., later Governor of Alaska, and W. C. Edes, a location and construction engineer for several western railroads. The Alaskan Engineering Commission reported its findings as to alternative locations and estimated costs to President Wilson in February 1915, and, in May of that year, the President selected the present route as shown on the following map. |