Now called the Dalton Highway, the route to the Arctic was built 50 years ago in mere months, part of the rush triggered by discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field
Fifty years ago, work crews began a rush job to build what was then called the Haul Road, the gravel route to the site on the North Slope where the nation’s biggest oil field had been discovered. The road to the Prudhoe Bay oil field was completed quickly to accommodate the rushed construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
Now a traveling exhibit memorializes the five-month construction of the road now called the Dalton Highway.