Chatter Marks EP 144 The AlCan

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The Alaska Highway—better known as the AlCan—was built during World War II as a strategic military supply route connecting the continental United States to Alaska. Construction began on March 9, 1942, just three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor heightened fears of Japanese expansion in the North Pacific. Those fears became very real that June, when Japanese aircraft bombed Dutch Harbor and, days later, Japanese forces occupied the Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu.

Through perspectives rooted in history, Indigenous culture, poetry, and geopolitics, we trace how the AlCan reshaped Alaska and parts of Canada—connecting communities and countries while transforming the land, economies, and people along its route. And how a military road built more than eighty years ago became a permanent part of Alaska’s identity and our idea of the North.

Image Details: Steep road section along the Alaska Highway, British Columbia, 1942. Image courtesy of the Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, RN 735-17c, 3460.