What Happens Every Time Alaska Tries to Build a Road to Juneau

Juneau is the capital of America's biggest state, and you can't drive there. No road connects Alaska's capital to the rest of North America. Here's why the ground has beaten every plan to build one. Juneau sits between the Juneau Icefield, 1,500 square miles of ice with more than 1,000 glaciers, and Lynn Canal, a 90-mile fjord lined with cliffs and avalanche paths. Haines and Skagway, at the top of the same fjord, are on the road network. Juneau, 90 nautical miles south, has relied on ferries since the 1950s. In this documentary we fly over the real terrain in 3D and follow everyone who tried to beat it: the 1880 gold strike that founded Juneau, the 1917 Treadwell mine cave-in, the Princess Sophia disaster on Vanderbilt Reef, the 1974 vote to move the capital to Willow, the $574 million Juneau Access road that was killed in 2016, and the 2025 plan to try again. Then the ground fights back: the 2008 avalanches that cut the city's power, the Mendenhall Glacier floods, and an icefield that is melting twice as fast as before. Have you taken the ferry up Lynn Canal or flown into Juneau? Tell us what you saw in the comments. Next on High Ground Atlas: Lake Superior, drained all the way down to its deepest point. CHAPTERS 0:00 The road ends at Echo Cove 0:00 The wall: the Juneau Icefield and Lynn Canal 0:00 Haines, Skagway and the only two corridors 0:00 Gold: Juneau, Treadwell and the Klondike 0:00 The Princess Sophia 0:00 Everyone else gets a road 0:00 The vote to move Alaska's capital 0:00 Juneau Access: the road that died twice 0:00 Avalanches, blackouts and glacier floods 0:00 The road isn't dead 0:00 An island on the mainland SOURCES FHWA / Alaska DOT&PF, Juneau Access Final SEIS (2018) Alaska DOT&PF, Historic Roads of Alaska (2017) Anchorage Daily News, KTOO, Juneau Independent, Alaska's News Source Davies et al., Nature Communications (2024), Juneau Icefield ice loss Elevation data: USGS 3DEP. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Natural Earth. #Alaska #Juneau #Geography