Engineer
Surveys
For Cut-off
(Last of a Series)
This is the story of a survey
or for the Army Engineers, the
story of a civilian who was first
to hike over the Portage glacier
into the area for the survey and
then construction of the Alaska
Railroad Cut-off. This is the
story of an Alaska-born en
gineer, Olavi Kukkola.
From Nome down to Ketchi
kan, natives have been partners
of the Army Engineers since the
job of fortifying Alaska began
back in the summer and fall of
1540. In some of the dangerous,
under-fire surveys of the Aleut
ians, Alaskan scouts, both na
tive and sourdoughs, pooled
their knowledge of Alaska with
the Engineers' technical skill.
But Olavi Kukkola is not only
one of the not-so-often met
Alaskan born, he is also an
Alaskan trained engineer.
Born at Chichagoff, down
near Juneau, Oli is not in the
Army because 4th of July sky
rockets took part of a hand
when he was 7. Of the Kukkola
family which came to Alaska
from Finland, only Oli and a
brother are living. He was grad
uated from the Juneau High
School and worked his way
through the Lniversity of
Alaska, the work prolonging his
graduation in engineering until
1938, when he took a post grad
uate year
Oli went to work for the
Fairbanks-Exploration after
college and first joined the U. S.
Engineers on flood control work
for the Seattle Engineer District
in 1910. In 1911, he worked
under the Army Engineers ai
the Headquarters of the Alaska
Defense Command. It wai
April 23, 1941, that he hiked
over Portage glacier to the
rocky shore line where the Alas
ka Railroad Cut-off would com
mence and the new salt-watei
terminus of Whittier would be
built, to bring interior Alaska 52
miles closer to the coast and cut
off snow-filled passes on the rail
line.
Oli has been “outside” to the
States but once in his life, last
June when he visited his brother
Theodore now at an Army Air
Force technical training camp in
the Middle West. Most amazing
sight of the outiide trip, says
Kukkola, was to stand on the
street corners of Seattle and
watch thousands of people
crowding by evidently going no
where but rushing there.
After the day’s work, seven
days a week anywhere from 8 to
14 hours a day, Oli hunts, fishes
in the streams and the sea, bikes
over the plentiful glaciars, oc
casionally goes to a movie at a
nearby Army post. Photography
is his favorite hobby, taking
progress pictures of construction
for Army Engineer records. Oli
has watched this Engineer job
progress, too, from the day his j
boss, Antone Anderson, joined |
(continuei' <" page 11
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