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Chatter MarksAuthor: Anchorage Museum
Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, dedicated to exploring Alaskas identity through the creative and critical thinking of ideaspast, present and future. Featuring interviews with artists, presenters, staff and others associated with the Anchorage Museum and its mission. Language: en Genres: Arts, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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EP 144 The AlCan
Episode 144
Tuesday, 13 October, 2026
The Alaska Highway—better known as the AlCan—was built during World War II as a strategic military supply route connecting the continental United States to Alaska. Construction began on March 9, 1942, just three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor heightened fears of Japanese expansion in the North Pacific. Those fears became very real that June, when Japanese aircraft bombed Dutch Harbor and, days later, Japanese forces occupied the Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu. Through perspectives rooted in history, Indigenous culture, poetry, and geopolitics, we trace how the AlCan reshaped Alaska and parts of Canada—connecting communities and countries while transforming the land, economies, and people along its route. And how a military road built more than eighty years ago became a permanent part of Alaska’s identity and our idea of the North. Image Details: Steep road section along the Alaska Highway, British Columbia, 1942. Image courtesy of the Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, RN 735-17c, 3460.
