Seward daily gateway., 1928-05-02

 Secretary of the Navy set aside and had created by Pres dential proclamation site of $500 acres as Naval Re- serve two miles south of Seward.
 Every Government commission that has examined Resurrection bay, also General Franklin Bell when Chief of Staff of the United States Army has given 1t qualified praise one of the worlds few ideal harbors always open and sheltered every hour of every day in the year. and always ice free. General Bell visited 1t on trip of inspection and promptly established 5000 acre reserve for future military purposes at it's entrance
 Portage bay, the contrary, has been Hooked into by private railroad companies and by Government com missions at different times during the last 25 years every of which turned it down decisvey and unanimously physically unfit and impossible for railroad terminals or for Naval uses of any kind It blocked by floating ice practically wholly for five months of every year. is shut off from the interior by high range of mountains is studded with numerous pnnacles of sunken rocks as shown by all Photographic charts and storm swept and fog bound So that vessels plying to and from 1t in the winter months would pay the highest marine risks 26 per- cent contrasted with the lowest per cen for Resur rection bay.
 It is noteworthy fact that every enemy of the Alas ka Railroad project has shown his coors from the begn ing by favoring Portage bay it's terminus, with the perfectly obvious purpose of fastening upon it the m dcue and dscredt of impossible harbor and center of operation
 General Richardson refers to the "heavy grades from Seward through the Kenai peninsula The highest elevation through the Kenai peninsula exactly 1865 feet and the maximum grade is 22 per cent compensated and
 
 rate stretches That the standard maximum grade of every transcontnenal railroad and all of them ee vatons exceeding 5000 feet much 10000 feet Of tn remaining 54 miles through the Switzerland of the Kena peninsula every mile is water grade on the wide floors of timbered valleys.
 But even the small amount of maximum 22 grades through the Kena peninsula be reduced Is at light cost and the distance shortened IS miles, by the building of cutoff through Moose Pass leaving the present main line at Mile 29 north of Seward and uniting with again Turnagain Arm opposite Sunrise The rapid filling up of Turnagain Arm renders it crossabe by railroad fill and bridge at Sunrise. That cutoff will eliminate every mile of 22 grade all trouble from in the 1oop district" between Miles 48 and 52 every foot of sheds besides traversing and extensive mineral in the Moose Pass country to furnish profitable ton mage.
 As to resources along the route of the Alaska Rail- road they have been examined and reported by different been demonstrated by many hundred of farmers garden ers and miners in all the mountains and valleys between Seward and Fairbanks.
 The Susitna valley which the Alaska Railroad trav- erses 150 miles long by 25 to 75 miles wide with low al
 ude of 100 to 800 feet above the The valleys of the Kena peninsula including the plateau of 30 miles by 100 miles on it's western side along Cook Inlet aggregate half the of the Susitna valley, all tributary to the Alaska Railroad.
 The agricultural department through it's agents on government experiment. farms in Alaska estimates the total of all these valleys together in the Susina and the Kena regions at 900 acres of which nine tenhs is covered with birch, spruce and poplar trees of fine quality and three-quarter of which is agricultural and grazing lands equal in productive capacity to the agr cultural lands of our northern states.
 Many thousands of tourists from all parts of the United States have been there and have the xur ance of the growth of red top and blue stem grasses cho non6f thQ