Alaska Shares a 2.5-Mile Tunnel Between Trains and Cars. The Whole Town Lives in One Building

ONE LANE, TWO RAILS, AND A MOUNTAIN ON A TIMETABLE Every morning in Whittier, Alaska, the road to the rest of the world is a single lane of pavement laid between two railroad tracks, inside Maynard Mountain, and it opens on a schedule. The tunnel is about two and a half miles long, cars and trains share it, and nearly all of the town's roughly 270 residents live in a single fourteen-story building. This documentary explains why the Army cut a railroad tunnel through solid rock during World War II, how Whittier ended up inside one concrete tower while the Buckner Building stood empty beside it, what the 1964 earthquake changed, and why Alaska paved over the rails in the 1990s instead of digging a second tunnel. Told through real footage and the historical record. IN THIS VIDEO Why the Army wanted an ice-free port on Passage Canal Building the tunnel under Maynard Mountain The Buckner Building and the Hodge Building, later Begich Towers The Good Friday earthquake of 1964 Converting the railroad tunnel into a road How the one-lane signal system and nightly closures run daily life What Whittier looks like today CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:10 Wartime Need 2:38 Mountain Geography 3:05 Building The Tunnel 4:55 One Building Town 7:08 The 1964 Earthquake 10:04 Converting To Road 11:50 The Tunnel Today Have you driven the Whittier tunnel or lived in Begich Towers? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe for more forgotten stories of American railroads. #Whittier #Alaska #WhittierTunnel #BegichTowers #AlaskaRailroad #RailroadHistory #Railroad #Tunnel #AmericanHistory #RailStoriesUSA