"They arrived in a pair on November 30, 2023, travelling a stretch of highway that starts in Anchorage but quickly becomes quite rural. They drove past a ski resort and a small shopping center, then turned off through a forested valley with no cell service, until they reached the entrance to the longest highway tunnel in the country: the portal to Whittier, Alaska."
"The one-lane tunnel, which carves 2.5 dark, musty, bumpy miles through a glacial mountain, opens for two 15-minute periods every hour, once for each direction; the troopers caught the 10 a.m. window heading east. On the other side, Whittier's punishing microclimate - more snow than Aspen, Amazon-level rainfall, and almost nonstop wind - greeted them with cold, wet bluster. This small port town was built by the military during World War II, as the U.S. warred with Japan."
State troopers traveled through rural highway and a one-lane tunnel to reach Whittier, Alaska, on November 30, 2023. Whittier is a small, wind-swept port town with extreme snowfall and heavy rainfall. The town contains a 14-story military-era housing complex that houses nearly all of roughly 300 residents. Many residents moved from American Samoa and form a close-knit community. Tupe Smith lives in a third-floor unit, had just fed her young children, and her husband, a first responder, was sleeping after a late shift. Smith had been elected to the local school board on October 3.
Read at High Country News
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