The Nenana daily news., 1919-03-29
WAUGH IS URGED
 ID MAKE SURVEY
 KANTISHNA ROAD

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 struction of wagon roads in this and adjacent districts to make possible the development of mineral areas
 now practically inaccessible, and to serve as feeders to the government railroad, Frederick D. Browne, local
 head of the Alaskan Engineering
 commission, has addressed a letter
 to Major W. H. Waugh, chairman
 of the Alaska Road commission, recommending that survey be made
 during the coming summer, of a
 suggested wagon road route into the
 Kantishna country. The recon mendation is the result of a trip made recently by MT. Browne for the purpose of looking over the district to size up road building possibilities.
 These wagon roads into the different districts" Mir Browne in- formed the Road commission chair man. ''are looked upon favorably by he Alaskan Engineering commis- sion as feeders for their railroad and it may be eventually that into some of these districts railroads may even be built Eventually the main line from Seward to Fair banks must depend more or less for the traffic it receives on these differnt roads. With this in view l recently started a reconnaissance to the Kantishna mining district with view of obtaining costs for the construction of a road, but be- cause of the winter conditions it is not feasible at this time for an engineer to commit himself as to costs.
 It is impossible to determine the character of the country covered as it is with snow. and it naturally makes very great difference in the cost, whether gravel on the one hand. or swamps on the other, are encountered along the lines pro- jected
 T would liked to have been able to give some costs, but in view of the above, and what follows, I think you will agree with me that summer is the proper time to get the information desired.
 Tn going into the Kantishna I chose as my route the Riley creek drainage through branch of Riley creek, known as Hines creek. My reason for assuming this as start ing point was two-fold. First. it will make the shortest line between a Junction of the railroad and the center of the Kantishna mining dis trlct- Secondly, being higher in the hills there are presumably less swamps and overflow land; the drainages are naturally not so con centrated, though there may be more of them, meaning less in the way of heavy construction.
 "on account of the deep snow that l encountered. and because of storms that came on during my trip, l found that it was imprac- ] tieable if not impossible, to de- termine the character of the terrain over which we were travelling, that IS, there was no way of telling whether the summer weather would show swamp, bog, moss or gravel. l nor was there any way of determin- Ing. except Tn very crude manner, the real flow of the streams and the difficulties attendant upon bridging them. Sufficient informa- ton, however, was obtained to show that this route is practical for a wagon road at least. Five per cent grades may be secured. 1 which would be, of course, very light for wagon road, and it is i possible that if my distances are not too far in error, being esti- mated only, a 3.3% eouated grade might be obtained for railroad as 1 far at least as Middle r;yar h, |