Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Alaska: The Elegant White Elephant
In house-hungry, comfort-starved Alaska, Shangri-La is a place called POW. Officially, POW is the 400-acre Port of Whittier, located on an arm of ice-free Prince William Sound and back-dropped by the glaciated peaks of the Chugach Mountains, which provide some of the world's wildest, most breathtaking scenery.
POW is only 62 rail miles from Anchorage, but for all the good it does Alaskans, it might as well be in Tibet.
Established as an emergency defense port by the U.S. Army in 1943, it cost $55 million, has now been declared surplus property by the...
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