A Rat's Nest of Rails

Tundra, Ice, Mosquitoes, and Permafrost: Saga of the Alaska Railroad

Steve Levi

• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781637471968
• eBook ISBN:
  9781637472149
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

That the Alaska Railroad was ever built is astonishing. It was constructed over the most treacherous terrain in the world during the most violent political era in US history. The workforce included anarchists, Bolsheviks, socialists, syndicalists, and labor union organizers against the backdrops of the First World War, Spanish Influenza, the Russian Revolution, American troops in Siberia to keep Russian Socialism from our shore, Japan's relentless gobbling of colonies from Southeast Asia to Siberia, and the Great Red Scare. It was built by the United States military to supply the United States Navy with coal and, in the process, closed coal mining in the Territory of Alaska – to the great anger of the private sector. Then there were the scammers, land speculators, Natives and their land claims, blacks and discrimination, sedition, wages in scrip, permafrost, freezeup/breakup, ration stamps, and environmental damage. A Rate's Nest of Rails is an in-the-weeds look at what it took to construct the only government-funded railway in American history.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Rat’s Nest Revisited
• Rat River
• Lieutenant Oscar Pensacola
• Harold Morgan, Alaska Northern Scalper
• “Ain’t American capitalism special?”
• Josephus and Payne
• “Malamute Mike” Denslow, Dredge Operator
• Johnathan Albert, Track Labor Supervisor
• John Rutherford, Alaska Railroad Property Route Manager
• Jerry Sandusky, Railroad Spiker
• Alaska Railroad Lobbyist Roberto “Bobby” Sandusky
• Gerald O’Reilly, Cement man
• Charlie Benson, Socialist
• Vladimir Ivanovic, Bolshevik
• Harold Duncan, Gandy Dancer
• Josephine Carlos, Suffragette
• Horatio Sandroni, Accounts Receivable
• The Seward Territory of Alaska, Gold Railway Robbery of 1926
• Johnathan Abernathy, Paymaster
• Chauncy “Keys” McDoogle, Telegraph Operator
• Seal
• “Joe Smith,” Bootlegger
• Karen Whittaker
• Jethro Sandoval, Cement Mixer
• Jonathan Sanders, Coal Mine Claimant
• Salmon
• Gerald “Bowsprit” Whittaker
• Harry Donahue, Alaska Railroad Track Line Supervisor
• Billy Jerome, Mule Driver
• Gerald Harrison III, Cargo Entrepreneur
• Johnny “Snow Deep and Elbow Grease” Fitzsimmons
• Pietro Angelini, Contractor
• Eagle
• Rufus
• Philip Marengo, Union Organizer
• Harold Donahue, Line Boss
• Dangers and Blessings of the Emerging Alaska Railroad
• Daniel Benchley, Workman
• Stanford Pickford, Rail Spiker
• Albert Finley, Teamster
• Oliver Harrison, Harrison’s Roadhouse Proprietor
• Moose
• Sagebrush Bill
• Daniel Domani, Bridge Engineer
• Norbert Whitesburg, Accountant