Part one of two
Al Clayton tells about acquiring, modifying and driving a truck to Alaska in pre-statehood days.
Buck Buchanan with his new Dodge Power Wagon.
Diamond T at the Slims River, Mile 1,059.8 Alcan Highway. (It is not listed in the current Milepost travel guide.)
Editor's note: Al Clayton, who died in 2008, recounted his Alaskan truck driving experiences to his daughter, Maraley McMichael, in 2005. She has written and submitted the story in two parts.
In November 1946, I was working at the Seward power plant when I received a phone call. My mother was dying in Dillon, Montana. After packing some clothes in a suitcase, I took a taxicab to the airport and flew from Seward to Anchorage on Christensen Airways. Once in Anchorage, I booked a flight to Fairbanks on Star Airways. At the Fairbanks airport I got a flight to Edmonton on Canadian Pacific Airways. The last leg of my journey was over 600 miles from Edmonton, Alberta to Dillon, Montana, by bus. Arriving in Dillon, I found my mother still alive, but breathing her last.
After the funeral was over I had some of her personal belongings to bring back to Alaska and an idea struck me. I could buy a vehicle and drive back home, up the Alcan Highway. After finding no pickups available to purchase, I learned it was possible to pay $3,050 for a Diamond T flatbed chassis in Belgrade, Montana. I made the purchase, drove it to Idaho Falls, and had an 8 by 16 foot flatbed with side panels built for it. They built it tight enough to haul grain, with 5-foot sides and an end gate.
By chance, while I was back in Dillon, I ran into Frank Wine who ran the Seward Sawmill out at Bear Lake. Since there was a shipping strike going on, he and I figured we could purchase a load of food, haul it back to Alaska, and make some money in the process. We bought a ton of great northern beans, 1,400 pounds of ham, and 150 pounds of sweet cream butter right out of a creamery in Butte. With the food, the household furniture, and the rest of my other's stuff, I had a full load.
I arrived at U.S. Customs at Sweet Grass, Montana near the end of December. However, the Canadian Customs at Coots, Alberta, would not let me travel on Sunday, so I had to sit around for a whole day. The next day, Dec. 31, 1946, I crossed the border and drove 500 miles. All the way to Edmonton, where the temperature had dropped to around zero degrees.
A day later, in Athabaska, it was minus-45 F and it took me two hours to warm up the truck for travel. I had to warm the engine, the transmission, and the rear end. As the day wore on, due to a warm front, the temperature rose to minus-10 F. About this time I met a fellow named Buck Buchanan driving a new Dodge Power Wagon. He thought it would be nice if we traveled together up the Alcan and I agreed it was a good idea. Buck was pulling an empty trailer, so at night we rolled out our mattresses and sleeping bag and slept on its floor. There was no heat, of course.
We couldn't make more than about 250 miles a day, with different things slowing us down. Some of the big grades were icy because of the warmer weather. On one particular grade, I didn't make it to the top. When I started sliding backward, I tapped the brakes and steered, going back down the hill until I hit a gravel spot. After recovering my shaky nerves, I took a better run at the hill and made it the second time.
It took us about five days of traveling to get to Whitehorse, where it started getting much colder again. I remember driving one particular starry night, when the moonlight was so bright I could look off and see the mountains, which I judged to be 100 miles in the distance.
At the Canadian/Alaskan border, there was no customs station, so we drove another 90 miles to Tok before checking in. The fellow at the American Customs wanted me to unload my truck so they could check the contents. It was minus-45 F. I didn't offer to start unloading and they didn't seem too ambitious to do it. They looked over my manifest and soon took my word for it. The next day Buck and I went our separate ways. He headed for Fairbanks, while I started for Anchorage.
Going through Indian River between Tok and Chistochina, about a quarter mile of the roadway was flooded with water running over the highway. I didn't know if I would make it, but hoped for the best and sure enough made it through that overflow. I stopped at Harry and Gladys Heinz's store in Glennallen. Gladys hadn't seen me around before and asked suspiciously, "who are you?" I'll never forget the tone of voice she questioned me with.
It was minus-30 F when I arrived in Anchorage on Jan. 10. I stayed in a rental house I had built in 1940. Every morning I warmed up the truck and went out to sell my load of goods. Unfortunately for me, the shipping strike was over by this time and most of the merchants in town would only take a bag or two of the beans, saying that was all they could buy because their main shipment would be arriving anytime. I sold the butter for the same price I bought it for in Montana, and eventually got rid of all the ham and most of the beans. I told Frank Wine, "Well, we got our money back is all. Here is a check for what you put in."
