wo railroads currently operate in this state: the Alaska Railroad, covered in this month’s “100 Years of Passengers, Freight, and Real Estate,” and the White Pass & Yukon Route. But let’s pause to remember a third railroad that shaped Alaska’s history.

In 1906, J.P. Morgan and Simon Guggenheim formed the Alaska Syndicate that purchased the Kennecott Copper Corporation and built the Copper River and Northwestern Railway to transport ore to Cordova. The tracks crossed the Miles Glacier Bridge, also called the Million Dollar Bridge, over the Copper River. It was completed in 1911 and operated until 1938.

The syndicate’s control of the corridor to the Interior prompted the federal government, in its efforts to develop the territory, to choose an alternate route. Thus, the Alaska Central Railway, built out of Seward in 1903 (later extended to Turnagain Arm as the Alaska Northern Railroad), became the roots of a new railway to connect with the Tanana Valley Railroad yard in Fairbanks.

In one view, the Alaska Railroad has always been a government venture meant to outcompete private enterprise. In another view, the public utility opened opportunities for entrepreneurs that the Morganheim syndicate thwarted. This view, championed by the territory’s delegate to Congress, James Wickersham, prevailed.

The Alaska Railroad survives as one of about two-dozen Class II regional railroads in the United States, while the White Pass & Yukon Route is considered a Class III narrow-gauge short line. Both are isolated from other rail systems. The Alaska-Alberta Railway Development Corporation formed in recent years to build a 1,600-mile connection from Delta Junction to a railhead at Fort McMurray, but work was suspended in 2021 amid financial shenanigans.

This edition of Alaska Trends visualizes the state-owned railroad’s bottom-line data summarized elsewhere in this issue. As it shows, the trend is up.