Digital Bob Archive

Interest in a Taku road, which had been on again, off again ever since Frederick Schwatka explored the route in 1891, revived once more in the 1950's. The Juneau Chamber of Commerce, which had fostered the project on several previous occasions, again began promoting it in 1952 after it learned that development was being planned on a large asbestos deposit near McDame Creek in the Cassiar District of British Columbia, some 140 miles east of Tulsequah. The asbestos development, it was said, would involve the creation of a town of 500 to 1,000 people at the mine site.

Consolidated Mining & Smelting Company, which by then was mining base metals at Tulsequah, favored a road to tidewater as well as one eastward to the Cassiar.

The revived interest in a Taku road touched off a controversy, much of it carried on in the press, between two federal officials in Alaska. Governor Ernest Gruening urged the Bureau of Public Roads to undertake a survey of the route and implied that the agency was remiss in not having already done so. Hugh A. Stoddard of the BPR responded that his agency would be willing to participate in a survey of the American portion of the road if the Governor's office would obtain an assurance of Canadian participation.

\"Negotiation is not up to the governor's office,\" Governor Gruening told the press, \"but to the road-building agency.\" Nevertheless, after some further horn-locking in the press between the two federal officials, they both attended a meeting of the Territorial Board of Road Commissioners on March 25, 1952. Others present included Regional Forester B.F. Heintzleman, Commissioner of Roads A.F. Ghiglione, Territorial Treasurer Henry Roden and Territorial Highway Engineer Frank A. Metcalf. At that meeting Governor Gruening agreed to negotiate with the Premier of British Columbia regarding the road survey. So far as can be determined, no assurances of financial participation were received from that government.

Without regard to what the Canadians might or might not do, another federal agency, the Alaska Road Commission, then a part of the Department of the Interior and headed by A.F. Ghiglione, commenced a survey of the proposed road in 1953. The survey that year covered the area from Thane to Point Salisbury. In 1954 two survey crews were put in the field by the ARC. One crew worked from Point Salisbury to a point just east of Annex Creek. That would be the best place, it was thought, for a ferry crossing of Taku Inlet.

The second crew was quartered at Taku Lodge and worked eastward toward the Canadian boundary. When both crews finished their work that fall it was announced that the road from Thane to the boundary would be 48 miles in length, not counting the ferry crossing. Another 55 miles of road would be required to connect with Atlin and the Alaska Highway.

About the time the road survey was completed, interest in the Taku was heightened by an announcement that a Canadian firm, Frobisher, Ltd., was planning a $700 million power development on the river.