The Alaska Highway

Dawson Creek, BC, to Fairbanks

"It began in panic: On December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, American military planners looked at a map and saw the long sweep of Alaska's Aleutian Islands extending like a bridge down into the Pacific, only 1,000 miles from Japan. If the Japanese were to gain a foothold in Alaska, they feared, the continental U.S. could be invaded by land.

Mobilization was swift.  By March 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had begun work on a supply road that would connect the U.S. and Canadian road systems to Fairbanks, a distance of 1,520 miles. With engineers working just ahead of the bulldozers, the Alaska-Canada Military Highway ('Alcan' for short) was completed in only eight months."

From "1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before you Die" by Patricia Schultz (p. 913). (Thanks, Sherri, that book was a thoughtful gift.)

Can you imagine -- 1,520 miles of unbroken ground, over huge mountains, through giant forests, and in all kinds of weather, including winter, -- and it was completed in only 8 months.  The workers were a special group of people, but more on them later.