Alaska Route 1
- 3 min read
- 3 chapters
Related on Lably
Through Interstate Highway System, Soviet Union and World War II
AK-1 is also known by the named highways it traverses:
- Sterling Highway from Homer to Tern Lake Junction
- Seward Highway from Tern Lake Junction to Anchorage
- Glenn Highway from Anchorage to Glennallen
- Richardson Highway from Glennallen and Gakona Junction
- Tok Cut-Off from Gakona Junction to Tok
Route description
AK-1 begins at the Alaska Marine Highway's Homer Ferry Terminal at the tip of Homer Spit just south of the end of the Sterling Highway in Homer. It follows the entire Sterling Highway through Soldotna to the junction with the Seward Highway north of Seward, where it meets the north end of AK-9. There it turns north and follows the Seward Highway to its end in Anchorage, and follows the one-way pairs of Ingra and Gambell Streets and 6th and 5th Avenues, continuing east on 5th Avenue to the beginning of the Glenn Highway. AK-1 follows the entire length of the Glenn Highway, passing the south end of the George Parks Highway (AK-3) near Wasilla and meeting the Richardson Highway (AK-4) near Glennallen. A short concurrency north along AK-4 takes AK-1 to the Tok Cut-Off, which it follows northeast to its end at the Alaska Highway (AK-2) at Tok.
The majority of AK-1 is part of the Interstate Highway System; only the route between Homer and Soldotna does not carry an unsigned Interstate designation. The entire length of A-3 follows AK-1 from the Kenai Spur Highway in Soldotna to the turn in downtown Anchorage; there A-1 begins, running to Tok along AK-1. (A-1 continues to the Yukon border along AK-2, the Alaska Highway.) Only a short portion of the Seward Highway south of downtown Anchorage and a longer portion of the Glenn Highway northeast to AK-3 are built to freeway standards; the proposed Highway to Highway Connection would link these through downtown.
Sign in to keep reading
2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Major intersections
All exits are unnumbered.
Tok Cut-Off
The Tok Cut-Off is a highway in the U.S. state of Alaska, running 125 miles (201 km) from Gakona (on the Richardson Highway, 14 miles (23 km) north of Glennallen), to Tok on the Alaska Highway which had been constructed from Montana through Calgary, Alberta, through Whitehorse, Canada by Army engineers to move supplies and equipment, and to build airbases, to service the requirements of the Pacific theater, including transport of Lend Lease aircraft to the Soviet Union after its invasion by Germany.
The road was built in the 1940s through challenging terrain, largely by battalions of Black engineers, including the 97th Engineer Battalion. in order to facilitate transport of World War II material in particular from ports such as Valdez and Anchorage to the interior. It was upgraded in the 1950s to better connect the Richardson Highway more directly with Tok. It was called a "cut-off" because it allowed motor traffic coming to and from Canada on the Alaska Highway, to drive directly northeast or southwest connect to or from Southcentral Alaska communities without driving all the way to or from the terminus of the Alaska highway in Delta Junction, then traveling northwest or southeast by the Richardson Highway, reducing 120 miles (190 km) from the trip.
The 2002 Denali earthquake caused significant damage to the Cut-Off, particularly between mileposts 75 and 83 where major cracks and embankment slumping left the roadway fundamentally destroyed.