Léon Loicq de Lobel, sometimes referred to as Baron Loicq de Lobel, was a French engineer and aristocrat, primarily known for his briefly popular proposal in 1906 to build a bridge-and-tunnel link between

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

and

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. ...

. In 1898, de Lobel visited the Klondike region as an agent of the French government. In 1899, de Lobel authored ''Le Klondyke, l'Alaska, le Yukon et les Iles Aléoutiennes'', a 48-page piece originally published in the '' Bulletin de la Société de Géographie.'' The work was published as a separate volume in 1899, and reprinted in 1923. The work is a simple account of de Lobel's voyage in those regions. In August 1906, the

Czar Nicholas II of Russia Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...

issued an order authorising a Franco-American syndicate represented by de Lobel to begin work on the Trans-Siberian Alaska railroad project, involving bridging and tunnelling in the Bering Strait.Diane Slëzkine (2017) "Zimnik, du Baïkal au Béring" Ed.Les Carnets de l'Aléatoire.

References

People of pre-statehood Alaska People of the Klondike Gold Rush {{France-engineer-stub