TERRITORIES: Promised Land

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Now Alaska has 27 major airports, 20 big secondary landing strips, 43 radio ranges, 46 weather observation stations. There are 582 commercial airplanes registered within the Territory—there had been only 99 in 1940, 157 in 1945. More important, many are efficient, multiengined aircraft. The bush pilot is still making medicine with his light plane, still landing passengers and freight in improbable corners of the country. But the DC-3 and the DC-4 do the big business, droning unconcernedly over mountains which early flyers had crossed only with the aid of rabbits' feet and gilded baby shoes.

The Outside is only a few hours away from almost any Alaskan town. Pan American Airways flies daily schedules north from Seattle. Anchorage is only 17 hours from New York City by Northwest Airlines. When Northwest begins its Oriental service (July 15) over the Aleutians-Great Circle route, Tokyo, Shanghai and Manila will be almost as near. A new line is projected. Chinese National Aviation Corp., a Pan American affiliate, hopes to fly its planes into Alaska.

But the biggest boom is in military construction. Across Bering Strait, Russia, from which the U.S. bought Alaska for $7,200,000 in 1867, is only 52 miles away. Arctic and Pacific defense looms large in U.S. military thinking, and Alaska looms large in both. As Alaska-based B-29s, with lipstick-red wings and tails (easily seen in case of forced landings on the polar icecap), fly routine missions over the North Pole, the Army & Navy are pumping men and millions of dollars into the Territory. At Mile 26 on the Richardson Highway near Fairbanks, the Army is rushing construction of one of the world's biggest airfields—a super super-bomber base with three-mile runways. The Army is building a spur rail line to serve the base, is pouring concrete barracks at Elmendorf Field, improving Ladd Field, repairing installations at Nome. At Adak and Attu in the Aleutians, the Navy is spending $14 million on construction.

The Government's rickety but strategically important Alaska Railroad, the one all-weather link (470 miles) between Seward on the coast and Fairbanks in the interior, is being completely reconstructed. By 1952 its roadbed will be rebuilt, its rails and ancient rolling stock will be replaced, its narrow cuts (in which 106 moose had fatal head-on collisions with locomotives last winter) will be widened, its capacity for freight and passengers increased eight to ten times.

Alaska's Best Friend. These huge construction jobs mean huge payrolls; into Fairbanks alone last week Pan American was flying 2,500 laborers, cat skinners, carpenters. Alaskans drink an ironic toast: "Here's to Joe Stalin—Alaska's best friend," and speculate endlessly on rumors of similar activity in Siberia. For Uncle Joe is filling up the icebox.

All the Territory's towns are crowded, but areas of military construction blend the fever of the '98 gold rush with the Los Angeles boom of the 1920s. Since 1940, the population of dusty, mountain-rimmed Anchorage has swollen from 3,500 to 14,000. Indians, construction workers, farmers, soldiers, flyers, women in dungarees and muddy boots, women in mink coats and platform shoes, jostle on its mile-long main street, crowd its 66 saloons and liquor stores.