Road From Nowhere to Nowhere Going Strong After 50 Years : Anniversary: The Alaska Highway across Canada, built in record time by Army engineers, has changed the face of the 49th state.

It was the original road from nowhere to nowhere--slicing through the wilderness, traversing the Rockies, spanning more than 100 rivers, winding and twisting and unpaved.

But the Alaska Highway was one thing more: It was an engineering miracle.

“It wasn’t quite the Panama Canal,” said Walter Mason, 77, who commanded one of the platoons of engineers who built the road in 1942. “They moved a lot of dirt for that. But it was the time we had to do it in.”

“The Japanese were crawling all over the Pacific. Originally the road was to take years. Then they decided to do it in one.”

In fact, it took eight months and 12 days.

The first route through Canada to Alaska was completed Oct. 25, 1942. Fifty years later, the road once known as the Alcan Highway has changed the face of Alaska.

It has been an artery for trucks serving the oil-rich North Slope; it has been the major overland route for people moving to Alaska; it has carried hordes of recreational vehicles to America’s “Last Frontier”; it has brought modern benefits and modern ills to native peoples along its route.

“Many times things start with a simple idea and the idea kind of mushrooms. People never thought the highway would serve the purpose it does now,” said Lufti Raad, professor of engineering at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Half a century ago, the reasons for an overland route to the huge, sparsely populated territory were twofold. The Soviet Union, an ally, needed delivery of military hardware. And America’s northwest flank needed protection.

The Canadian government resisted a highway and the influx of Americans needed to build it, but relented after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

The highway was built by seven engineer regiments of the U.S. Army--three of them all black with white officers. They felled trees, put down gravel and built pontoon bridges at a breakneck pace.

The Army made an effort to keep the black regiments away from populated areas in Canada and Alaska and minimize publicity about them. Only recently did a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Anchorage honor seven black veterans for their roles in the construction of the highway

“Hell, we stayed out in the damn woods, freezing our . . . you know” said one, Richard E. Trent. He winked slightly. “It leaves you in awe to think why it took so long for us to get our recognition.”

Today’s two-lane Alaska Highway spans 1,422 miles from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska. More than 90% is paved, and no more than 60 miles pass without a gas station.

The Alaska Legislature allocated $1 million in 1991 to get the American portion in tiptop shape for the anniversary. Freezing and thawing buckle the asphalt each year. In some areas, the asphalt collapses.

“Every summer there are areas that tend to give up, and it sags,” said Wayne Eagle, Tok area maintenance manager for the state. “But the Alaska Highway is probably in better shape that it has ever been.”

Between 40,000 and 50,000 vehicles enter Alaska over the road each year, about 10% commercial. The 1968 oil strike in Prudhoe Bay boosted commercial traffic; it peaked in 1975 during the building of the trans-Alaska pipeline.

The state Division of Tourism said travel into Alaska via the highway is up 30% this year because of the anniversary.

And sometimes it is hard to believe this road was not built for tourists, offering vistas of snow-frosted mountains rising behind stretches of ocher tundra, and close encounters with moose, bear, sheep and occasional herds of caribou and bison.

The tourists have created livelihoods for auto mechanics, motel owners and native crafts people, and have given life to countless communities and truck stops along the road in Canada and Alaska.

Tok, a community at the intersection of the Glenn and Alaska highways near the Alaska-Canada border, has grown from a road camp established in 1942 to a town of nearly 1,000 inhabitants, specializing in motels.

Still, Yvonne Kisoun of the Yukon Indian Council said native peoples agreed to participate in the anniversary only if it was officially called a “commemoration” rather than a “celebration.”

“Because of the things the highway brought”--disease, alcohol, a cash economy and other things that permanently changed the Natives’ nomadic lifestyle--”we felt we couldn’t celebrate it,” Kisoun said.

But Walter Mason intends to celebrate this road he helped build when he was 27. “The road’s a part of me and I’m a part of it,” he said.

This month, Mason plans to return to Alaska from his Virginia home to make a home video among the slim, spiky black spruce that skirt much of the highway.

Mason, whose son, Charles, is a well-known Alaskan photographer, will drive over the modernized highway and the pristine wilderness and remember the patriotic effort of the 97th Engineer Regiment 50 years ago.

“Remembering all the sweat we put in. . . . I’ve had a number of experiences, but none more profound than that,” he said.