Eugene C. Robertson, 90; Geologist Helped Build the Alaska Highway

Eugene C. Robertson, 90, a geologist who helped build the Alaska Highway, died of heart disease Dec. 22 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md.

He was born in Tucumcari, N.M., and graduated from the University of Illinois in 1936. He was employed as a mining engineer with the Anaconda Copper Co. in Butte, Mont., until 1942, when he joined the Army Corps of Engineers.

He served as an officer with the 340th Regiment, one of 11,000 soldiers and 7,500 civilians assigned to help build the 1,520-mile Alaska-Canada Military Highway, or the “Alcan,” from Edmonton, Alberta, to Fairbanks, Alaska.

It was heavy, dirty work. Twenty-ton bulldozers, brought in to clear the way, sank when surface vegetation was removed and the exposed permafrost melted into black sludge. Where engineers had to, they laid down tree after tree to create a platform for the road itself. Begun in March 1942, the road was officially opened in November. It was improved the next year but wasn’t paved until 1960.

After nearly a year in the Far North, Robertson’s unit was stationed in the South Pacific for the rest of the war. He received a Bronze Star for his military service. His photographs of the Alaskan effort were shown on a recent PBS “American Experience” documentary, his family said.

After the war, Robertson earned a PhD in geology from Harvard University and went to the Washington, D.C., area to work at the Theoretical Geophysics Laboratory of the U.S. Geological Survey. He contributed numerous articles to scientific journals and edited a volume of scientific papers, “The Nature of the Solid Earth.” He also wrote “The Interior of the Earth” and “Geology of the Skagway B-3 and B-4 Quadrangles: Southeastern Alaska.”