Evening star., 1943-04-18
Rail Link Seen
Alaska Military Line
Reported Surveyed
By Taylor Richardson

- ~J'Os AAsS"0S "SOn
PRINCE GEORGE, British Columbia.
In the vast interior region of Brit
ish Columbia, an ancient pathway to
Yukon and Alaska gold. high expecta-
tlons exist that an Alaska railroad will
be constructed as military project by
American and Canadian authorities It
is known that the railroad has been sur
veyed, and while the exact route is a
military secret, there are only one of
two feasible points and Prince George is
most likely.
The new Alcan Highway starting at
Dawson Creek, British Columbia, about
$50 miles northeast of Prince George,
runs 1000 miles to Fairbanks, Alaska,
and it is now open for military traffic.
1t leads, with connections in Alberta,
from the central plains of North America
to the new strategic frontier of the
continent in the northwest. For more
than a year, heavy military traffic has
poured over the Alaska skyway, network
of vast airports leading to Alaska and
built by Canada before the United States
entered the war.
But few people in this country, versed
in the new strategy of the great North
west, believe that the skyway and the
highway are enough, and they are sure
that the railroad will carry heavy traffic
right to the Behring Straits across from
our powerful ally Russia, is soon to
pass from the survey to the construction
stage.
Called Victory Road.
Out of the deep censorship that covers
Northwestern Canada and Alaska a few
facts are beginning to trickle. United
States Army engineers are in the north
country selecting railroad routes to link
with lines in Canada and the United
States. Up here the railroad is already
spoken of as the Victory road.
Besides the highway to Fairbanks,
network of branch roads and a gridiron
system of telephone and telegraph COM
munications are coming into being
throughout the northwest Both Siberia
and North America are opening their
back doors, which have been closed and
forgotten amid the spruce-fragrant
mountains and snowy valleys of Alaska,
the Yukon and British Columbia.
Prince George, boom town of 5000,
Is one OF the strategic points of a region
that possesses turbulent history in al
most-forg gold-rush days and new
future in a period of global warfare,
Eighty years ago, the Caribou country
was known around the world. On the
heels of the California gold rush of 1849,
the gold seekers moved in hordes in 1860
into the interior of British Columbia,
finding fortunes in the sands of a. thou
sand rivers.
Almost every one has forgotten the
Caribou Trail of go and the fact that $50
miles OF railroad actually was built
northward from Vancouver between the
coastal mountains and the great escarp-
ment OF the Rocky Mountains 500 miles
inland. That railroad is operating to-
day, the Pacific Great Eastern, owned by
the government of British Columbia. 1t
Is likely to turn into one of the vital
links OF the new supply routes to Alaska.
Long considered white elephant, the
P. G. E. is ready-made starting point
for the Alaska railroad
In the 1S60s about s55, ,OOO 900 in gold
was taken from the sand bars of the
Fraser and other rivers in this country,
Placer mining is still going on Mean
while, the B. C. interior along the old
Caribou Trail has become a great cattle
country. The short grass hills and lush
meadows of this plateau land raises
thousands of head of cattle and has be-
come popular dude ranching country.
Built in Boom Days.
The railroad was built in the great
rail construction boom days in Canada
just before the last war. The Pacific
Great Eastern was designed to serve as
an outlet to Vancouver for the Grand
Trunk Western line that passes through
Yellowhead Pass in the Rockies and
runs across 700 miles of the B. c. inte-
rior to Prince Rupert.
The P. G. E. was never finished. Its
saltwater terminus is Squamish, on
Howe Sound, about 40 miles short of
Vancouver, and its northern terminus
is Quesnel, once thriving gold town,
30 miles south of Prince George. North
OF Quesnel its old grades still lie waiting
for rails. From Quesnel to Fairbanks
would mean building a 1,300-mile rail-
road extension.