Digital Bob Archive

While the Taku Road was under construction, in the summer of 1917, Percy Pond continued a program to build support for the project among the people of Juneau and Douglas. One of his devices was a series of week-end excursions to Taku Inlet and up the Taku River. The ferry Teddy, of the Juneau Ferry & Navigation Company, carried the excursionists to the river mouth where they boarded the river boat Cassiar, Captain William Strong, for the trip up to the boundary.

Captain Strong brought the Cassiar up from the Stikine River that summer and it is believed that it was the first commercial power vessel to run on the Taku.

In the summer of 1918 the Territorial Board of Road Commissioners again had a construction crew on the Taku Road. A lot of heavy grading and rock work was done, extending the road another quarter of a mile. Cost of that was reported at $1697.53. All the equipment was brought to Juneau and stored because, it was said, nobody was then living in the area of the road, all of the men having been drafted into the service.

That was the end of the Taku Road, although in 1924 the Forest Service did build three and a half miles of trail, starting at the up-river end of the road.

But why, after some $15,350 was spent on it, was the Taku Road dropped? The answer appears to have several parts. There is, however, no record showing that anyone ordered it stopped, and funds for the work were available. But the United States was very much in World War I by the summer of 1918, manpower was scarce, and it may have been difficult to find crews to work in such a remote area.

The squeaky wheel analogy must apply, too. Nobody was living in the Taku Valley and squawking for a road. Atlin people, what there were left of them, were too involved in the war effort to be bothered with the road question. And maybe the greatest factor of all was the fact that Percy Pond, who had done the most squeaking for the Taku Road, had left Juneau to spend five or six years in California and Nevada.

There were plenty of other projects in 1918 to occupy the Road Commissioners for Southeastern Alaska. Juneau fishermen and others had pleaded for a better channel over the bar north of town. In 1918 the Commissioners expended $18,085.29 to deepen the channel by three feet to a width of 50 feet for a distance of 6200 feet across the summit of the bar.

Allocations for other projects in the Juneau area at that time included $2,156 to rebuild a bridge over Gold Creek, $20,000 for the Eagle River Road, $3,000 for the road to Sheep Creek, $5,000 for the road up the Gold Creek Valley to the Perseverance Mine, $500 for an extension of the Douglas Cemetery Road, and $102 for a trail at Auke Bay.

Even after Percy Pond returned to Juneau he seemed to have lost his old enthusiasm for the Taku Road, and it was not until after World War II that local interest in the road was revived.