The Richardson Highway is a highway in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

, running 368 miles (562 km) and connecting Valdez to

Fairbanks Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska and the second largest in the state. The 2020 Census put the po ...

. It is marked as Alaska Route 4 from Valdez to

Delta Junction Delta Junction ( uk, Делта-Джанкшен, Delta Dzhankshen) is a city in the Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 958, up from 840 in 2000. The 2018 estimate was down to 931. T ...

and as

Alaska Route 2 Alaska Route 2 is a state highway in the central and east-central portions of the U.S. state of Alaska. It runs from Manley Hot Springs to the Canada-United States border, passing through Fairbanks and Delta Junction. Alaska Route 2 includes ...

from there to Fairbanks. It also connects segments of Alaska Route 1 between the Glenn Highway and the

Tok Cut-Off Alaska Route 1 (AK-1) is a state highway in the southern part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It runs from Homer northeast and east to Tok by way of Anchorage. It is one of two routes in Alaska to contain significant portions of freeway: the S ...

. The Richardson Highway was the first major road built in Alaska.

History

A pack trail from the port at Valdez to

Eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...

, a distance of about 409 miles (660 km), was built in 1898 by the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

to provide an "all-American" route to the Klondike gold fields. After the rush ended, the Army kept the trail open in order to connect its posts at Fort Liscum, in Valdez, and

Fort Egbert Fort Egbert was a U.S. Army base in Eagle, Alaska. It operated from 1899 to 1911. History Fort Egbert was established in 1899, during the Klondike Gold Rush, as U.S. Army headquarters in the District of Alaska. It was named by U.S. President Wil ...

, in Eagle. The Fairbanks gold rush in 1902, and the construction of a

WAMCATS The Alaska Communications System (ACS), also known as the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS), was a system of cables and telegraph lines authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1900 and constructed by the U.S. Army Signal C ...

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

line along the trail in 1903, made the Valdez-to-Eagle trail one of the most important access routes to the

Alaska Interior Interior Alaska is the central region of Alaska's territory, roughly bounded by the Alaska Range to the south and the Brooks Range to the north. It is largely wilderness. Mountains include Denali in the Alaska Range, the Wrangell Mountains, and ...

, so in 1910, the

Alaska Road Commission The Board of Road Commissioners for Alaska, more commonly known as the Alaska Road Commission or ARC, was created in 1905 as a board of the U.S. War Department. It was responsible for the construction and improvement of many important Alaska h ...

upgraded it to a wagon road. The head of the project was U.S. Army General

Wilds P. Richardson Wilds Preston Richardson (20 March 1861 in Hunt County, Texas – 20 May 1929) was an officer of the United States Army notable for being an explorer and geographer of Alaska in the early decades of the 20th century. During World War I, he was pro ...

, for whom the highway was later named. During the construction, the government hired failed

gold prospector Gold prospecting is the act of searching for new gold deposits. Methods used vary with the type of deposit sought and the resources of the prospector. Although traditionally a commercial activity, in some developed countries placer gold prospe ...

s as well as regular construction workers. The income from this work allowed many of the prospectors to leave Alaska. Several roadhouses now on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

were constructed along the route at this time. The rise of motorized travel led the road to be upgraded to automobile standards in the 1920s. To finance continued maintenance and road construction, the Alaska Road Commission instituted

toll Toll may refer to: Transportation * Toll (fee) a fee charged for the use of a road or waterway ** Road pricing, the modern practice of charging for road use ** Road toll (historic), the historic practice of charging for road use ** Shadow toll, ...

s for commercial vehicles in 1933 of up to $175 per trip, which were collected at the

Tanana River The Tanana River (Lower Tanana: Tth'eetoo', Upper Tanana: ''Tth’iitu’ Niign'') is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon (Athabaskan) ...

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

crossing at Big Delta. When the tolls were further increased in 1941 to boost business for the

Alaska Railroad Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

, disgruntled truckers nicknamed "gypsies" started a rogue ferry service in order to evade the toll. The

and Glenn highways, built during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, connected the rest of the continent and

Anchorage Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Ma ...

to the Richardson Highway at

and Glennallen respectively, allowing motor access to the new military bases built in the

Territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...

just prior to the war: Fort Richardson in Anchorage, and

Fort Wainwright Fort Wainwright is a United States Army installation in Fairbanks, Alaska. Fort Wainwright is part of the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the coterminous Fairbanks Metropolitan Statistical Area. The installation is managed by U.S. Army Garrison ...

adjacent to Fairbanks. The bridge at Big Delta, the last remaining gap, was built as part of the Alaska Highway project. The southern end was only open during summers until 1950, when a freight company foreman who lived near the treacherous

Thompson Pass Thompson Pass is a 2,600 foot-high (855 meter-high) gap in the Chugach Mountains northeast of Valdez, Alaska.Geographic Names Information Service"Thompson Pass, Alaska" U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed July 2, 2009. It is the snowiest place in Al ...

plowed the snow himself for an entire season to prove the route could be used year-round. The highway was paved in 1957. The

Trans-Alaska Pipeline System The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of ...

, built in 1973-1977, mostly parallels the highway from Fairbanks to Valdez.

Recent and future improvements

Richardson Highway Badger Road Interchange

* During the 1990s, the highway was upgraded from

to the main gate at

Eielson AFB Eielson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) base located approximately 26 miles (42 km) southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska and just southeast of Moose Creek, Alaska. It was established in 1943 as Mile 26 Satellite Field and redes ...

, making this stretch a 4-lane divided road. Intersections with other roads, however, are still almost entirely at-grade. * Under SAFETEA-LU,

from the Canadian border to Fairbanks, comprising parts of the Richardson and

Highways, has been declared a

High Priority Corridor The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA, pronounced ''Ice-Tea'') is a United States federal law that posed a major change to transportation planning and policy, as the first U.S. federal legislation on the subject in ...

( Corridor 67). What this means for the distant future is not yet certain; although SAFETEA-LU does explicitly provide federal funds for upgrading the road to 4 lanes and divided, from Salcha to Delta Junction.

Interstate Highway System

Richardson Highway is part of the unsigned part of the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. Th ...

east of Fairbanks. The entire length of

Interstate A-2 The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

follows Route 2 from the

George Parks Highway The George Parks Highway (numbered Interstate A-4 and signed Alaska Route 3), usually called simply the Parks Highway, runs 323 miles (520 km) from the Glenn Highway 35 miles (56 km) north of Anchorage to Fairbanks in the Alaska Inter ...

( Interstate A-4) junction in Fairbanks to Tok, east of which Route 2 carries

Interstate A-1 The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. Th ...

off the Tok Cut-Off Highway to the international border. Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities
Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Routes
, April 2006 Only a short piece of the Richardson Highway in Fairbanks is built to

freeway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms ...

standards.

Major intersections

Worthington Glacier from Richardson Highway

References

External links

Evolution of the Richardson Highway - ExploreNorthA journey down the Richardson Highway

archive
from archive.org {{Authority control Chugach Census Area, Alaska Copper River Census Area, Alaska Interstate Highways in Alaska Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska State highways in Alaska Transportation in Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska Transportation in Unorganized Borough, Alaska