When I mention Valdez, people usually respond with “earthquake” or “Exxon Valdez.” Both reflect well-known, unfortunate events in Valdez’s past. Another story, dark, tragic, and almost forgotten, relates a dramatic attempt by the town to position itself as a railroad terminus.
We know Valdez as a pipeline terminus. But a railroad terminus surrounded by mountains? The tale is stranger than fiction.
Following the disastrous attempt by gold seekers to cross the non-existent Valdez Glacier trail in 1898, a few hardy souls remained in the valley to establish the town of Valdez on the site of the Gold Rush tent city. In 1900, copper was discovered in the nearby Wrangell Mountains, kindling visions of riches. However, the only way Valdez would benefit was if a railroad could be built from the Kennecott Copper mines to the port of Valdez. Despite at least a dozen other proposed rail routes, by the summer of 1906, the Copper River & Northwestern Railway had completed a 15-mile railbed from Valdez into Keystone Canyon, where laborers were hand-drilling a 200-foot tunnel through a granite spur. The CR&NW Railway was part of the controversial Alaska Syndicate, a Guggenheim-J.P. Morgan financed venture, which also owned rights to the copper mine. When coal, necessary to power steam locomotives and the mine, was discovered farther north, the Syndicate pulled out of the Valdez project except for a token crew working on the Keystone tunnel.
Incensed at their abandonment, the citizens of Valdez found a new hero, promoter Henry Reynolds. In 1907, he raised $200,000, mostly from local residents, with which he opened a bank in town while promising to build the Alaska Home Railroad out of Valdez. The project, supported by territorial governor John Brady, was promoted as “Of Alaska, by Alaska, for Alaska,” a dream that proved wildly popular with the locals who were deeply suspicious of East Coast money.
When the CR&NW Railroad turned down Reynolds’ offer to purchase their Keystone right-of-way, 260 Home Railway laborers, armed with picks and shovels and, by some reports, dynamite, attempted to seize the nearly completed tunnel. Unfortunately, the handful of CR&NW workers had barricaded the entrance and were supported by armed deputy U.S. marshals. When warning shots failed to stop the attempted takeover, marshals fired on the crowd, wounding five men, one of whom later died.
Reynolds abandoned the project, closed his bank, and left town with the money. Later charged with mail fraud, he was judged to be insane, and the charges dropped. Governor Brady was forced by President Theodore Roosevelt to resign, and rival Cordova was chosen by the Alaska Syndicate as the terminus for the railroad, a result, some speculate, of the hostile episode at the tunnel.
Nearly 50 years later, on a sunny Fourth of July weekend, Mom inquired where we might find snow to make ice cream. We were directed by future governor Bill Eagan to the abandoned tunnel known at the time as The Bear Cave. Thus commenced another tunnel adventure, included in my upcoming memoir, The Road to Courage.
