A scenic mountain highway featuring expansive wilderness views, glacial valleys, rivers, and access to remote communities and outdoor recreation.
General Information
How to Get There
From Anchorage (180 mi): Take Glenn Hwy (AK-1 E) to Glennallen, then merge onto Richardson Hwy (AK-4 N or S) where the route continues through interior Alaska toward Fairbanks or Valdez.
Overview
The Richardson Highway is a highway in Alaska, running 368 miles (562 km) and connecting Valdez to Fairbanks. It is marked as Alaska Route 4 from Valdez to Delta Junction and as Alaska Route 2 from there to Fairbanks. It also connects segments of Alaska Route 1 between the Glenn Highway and the Tok Cut-Off. The Richardson Highway was the first major road built in Alaska.
A pack trail from the port at Valdez to Eagle, a distance of about 409 miles (660 km), was built in 1898 by the U.S. Army 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, in Eagle.
The Fairbanks gold rush in 1902, and the construction of a WAMCATS telegraph line along the trail in 1903, made the Valdez-to-Eagle trail one of the most important access routes to the Alaska Interior, so in 1910, the Alaska Road Commission upgraded it to a wagon road. The head of the project was U.S. Army General Wilds P. Richardson, for whom the highway was later named. During the construction, the government hired failed gold prospectors as well as regular construction workers. Several roadhouses now on the National Register of Historic Places were constructed along the route at this time.
The rise of motorized travel led the road to be upgraded to automotive standards in the 1920s.
The Alaska and Glenn highways, built during World War II, connected the rest of the continent and Anchorage to the Richardson Highway at Delta Junction and Glennallen respectively, allowing motor access to the new military bases built in the Territory just prior to the war: Fort Richardson in Anchorage, and Fort Wainwright 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. The highway was paved in 1957.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, built in 1973-1977, mostly parallels the highway from Fairbanks to Valdez.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Richardson Highway", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
