Alaska\u2019s Inclusion in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Work of the Bureau of Public Roads and the Transition to Statehood-Final Report

004882891987PDFResearch PaperAK-RD-87-31RSA No. 87NP027Federal aid highwaysRegional economicsHighwaysAlaskaFederal Aid Highway ActAdministration and ManagementHighwaysI10: Economics and AdministrationAlaskaUnited StatesAlaska. Dept. of Transportation and Public FacilitiesNaske, C-MUniversity of Alaska FairbanksAlaska. Dept. of Transportation and Public FacilitiesUS Transportation CollectionThe late governor and U.S. Senator from Alaska, Ernest Gruening devoted a chapter in his 1954 volume entitled The State of Alaska to transportation. The Chapter, "Transportation: Tangled Life Lines" examined Alaska's shipping, air transportation, highways, and railroad. According to Gruening, Hugh Peterson (D., Georgia) the chairman of the House Committee on Territories and also a member of the House Committee on Roads reported in 1946 that "the principal reason for the failure of Congress to extend the provisions" of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916* and its amendments to Alaska was probably the fact that the territory's vast size "would entitle it to an unduly large share of the total appropriation made under the act."79