Documentation to determine the eligibility of bridges on the Alaska Railroad provided graduate student Larry Mishkar with six months of fieldwork and report writing from his base in Anchorage, Alaska during the autumn of 2003.

As the railroad seeks to modernize and maintain their 169 bridges using mostly federal funds, they must perform determinations of eligibility to meet the guidelines of Section 106 of the National Register of Historic Places. Instead of doing reviews each bridge at the time of its alteration, the decision was made to do an all inclusive historic review.

Documentation of each bridge included photography using digital and film cameras, with black and white photographs serving as the railroads latest photographic bridge inventory since the mid 1960s. A pedestrian survey was made of each bridge to allow for the writing of a complete history and physical description as part of the 106 process. Hi-rail vehicles were used to access most of the right-of-way, extending from North Pole, near Fairbanks, to the ports of Whittier and Seward in the south.

The railroad uses of variety of structures to cross rivers, swamps, and lakes. About half of the bridges are timber trestle bridges of various lengths, while the remaining are various steel designs, including I beam, through truss, deck truss, through girder, or deck girder types. Concrete ballast deck bridges are slowly replacing timber trestles along the system.

Milepost 370.7 Through truss and through girder bridge over Nenana River: 482 feet in length

Milepost 239.0 Bulkhead and piles of timber trestle bridge: 42 feet in length

Milepost 148.3 Mixed bridge over the Matanuska River: 538 feet in length

Milepost 64.7 Military-surplus deck truss bridge over Twentymile River: 490 feet in length

Milepost 100.13 Military-surplus I beam bridge over Potter Creek: 27 feet in length

Photographs by Larry Mishkar - Select on photograph to enlarge

Archives maintained at the railroads headquarters near downtown Anchorage contained a wealth of information about the history of each bridge. Bridge inspection books, original drawings, and maps combined with the individual bridge histories and photographic database were the basis for the 700-page historic documentation report.

Larry Mishkar-Photographer
Graduate Program in Industrial Archaeology
Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, Michigan 49931