The places and people worth revisting

Here’s a limerick I made up about a tiny Alaskan community named Whittier, located less than an hour from Anchorage on Prince William Sound. In the old days you couldn’t drive there so we rode the train through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, and planned our return for a train that came much later in the day — not realizing the place had limited activity for four kids and their grandmother. In fact, the town’s 200 or so population mostly all live in a single building.

“There was a girl who went to Whittier

She thought it was a bigger cittier

She missed the train

And went insane

Now we certainly do pittier.”

That tunnel — named after the chief engineer for the construction of the Alaska Railroad and mayor of Anchorage in the 1950s — holds an interesting history. Built beneath a mountain by the military in 1943 as a supply route for merchandise arriving at Whittier’s deep water port it is today — at 2.5 miles — the longest combined highway tunnel in North America. In a league its own because by 2000 it could accommodate both trains and cars on a narrow one-lane corridor.

This sounds a little risky until you know how it works. The original rail tracks were brought level with a solid concrete surface — opening the tunnel to automobiles. Safe houses were constructed along the way in case of a natural disaster. There is also a three-foot-wide emergency sidewalk and several emergency turnouts.

To give good air in the tunnel powerful reversible jet fans at each end push air through vents the length of the road. A computer system regulates the flow of traffic. Cars heading in leave on the half hour and those heading out on the hour.

No more getting stuck waiting for the train — in a very pretty place with our picnic lunch. Just drive in, drive out. Somehow the adventure has gone tame.

Those before stories — some are not a place to revisit, but others are. They are the stories that get told and retold. Because there’s a certain satisfaction in having been there. Been there before.