Northwest Epic: The Building of the Alaska Highway, by Heath Twichell

Northwest Epic: The Building of the Alaska Highway, by Heath Twichell Northwest Epic is the panoramic story of the courageous U.S. Army Engineers and civilian contractors who toiled in the tense months after Pearl Harbor to build a 1,500-mile emergency supply line through the rugged Canadian Rockies to isolated military bases in Alaska. The construction…

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We Fought the Road, by Christine and Dennis McClure

We Fought the Road (224 pages) is the story of the building of the Alaska-Canada Highway during World War II. More than one third of the 10,607 builders were black; thought to be incapable of performing on a war front by many of their white commanding officers. Their task–which required punching through wilderness on a route…

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Moonlight Madness, by Samme Gallaher

Samme Gallaher offers a lively collection of stories about haunted roadhouses, bizarre animal behavior, weird weather, frontier justice, an unwitting “good time girl,” and an assortment of characters who inhabited Alaska’s remote Copper River Valley between the Klondike Gold Rush and World War II. Moonlight Madness (128 pages) will leave you with chills, and not…

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Boom Town Boy, by Jack de Yonge

This is the witty, ironic, and deliciously outspoken coming-of-age memoir of Jack de Yonge set in Fairbanks, Alaska–a once thriving little mining town slowly dying in the remote center of the vast territory in 1934. As Jack’s dad liked to say, no matter what direction you went out of town, you soon arrived in Nowhere.…

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Arctic Bush Pilot, by James Anderson and Jim Rearden

Backed by Wien Airlines, former Navy combat pilot “Andy” Anderson pioneered post-World War II bush service to Alaska’s vast Koyokuk River region serving miners, Natives, sportsmen, geologists, adventurers, and assorted bush rats. He flew mining equipment, gold, live wolves and sled dogs, you name it–anything needed for life in the bush. He sweated out dozens…

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