Contributed by Richard Estelle, Palmer Museum of History & Art
Folks who have travelled to Whittier, Alaska, whether by train or car, did so by way of the “Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel”, so named for the man who designed and located that unique approach to the town. Folks who ride the Alaska Railroad train between Seward and Fairbanks do so over tracks largely located and surveyed by Anton Anderson. Those who visit the Palmer Community Center today travel among the Colony-era buildings and streets also located according to the architect’s plan by Anton Anderson and his survey crew.
Anton Albert Andrew Anderson was, by all accounts, a remarkable man. Born in 1892 in New Zealand of Swedish and Irish heritage, he immigrated to Washington State in 1914, where he became a civil engineer and surveyor. In 1916, he came to Anchorage to work for the Alaska Engineering Commission as an engineer during early construction of the Alaska Railroad, engineering and surveying much of the line, the bridges and buildings between Seward and Fairbanks as well as laying out the original Anchorage townsite. He no doubt played a principal role in designing and locating the railroad’s Matanuska branch line extending from its junction at the community of Matanuska to the coalfields of Chickaloon, establishing the rail access that would later play such an important role in locating and establishing the Matanuska Colony Project.
Following construction of the railroad, Anderson was involved in numerous other major projects, including construction of the first Eklutna hydroelectric power project below Eklutna Lake which included dams, tunnel and penstock, powerhouse and substations to provide electricity to Anchorage by 1930. Other major engineering and surveying activity took him throughout the Territory including leading involvement in locating and designing the two rail tunnels leading to Whittier, Whitter’s port facilities and the Hodge building (now Begich Towers), to open that port to rail access in 1943. He was significantly involved in construction of the Alaska Highway, the Richardson and Glenn Highways, the Haines Cutoff and the Tok Extension. He supervised the relocation of the railroad along Turnagain Arm when the adjacent Seward Highway was constructed.
When the Matanuska Colony Project was initiated, resettling Midwestern farm families in the Matanuska Valley in 1935, a whole new town was required. A major factor influencing the location of that town was proximity to good access for delivery of all the people, goods and equipment required to form a town from its beginning. The choice was to locate adjacent to the rail line Anderson likely identified through the Matanuska Valley almost twenty years before. Anderson was on the Colony project scene early, leading his survey crew in converting the architect’s vision for the new town into specific locations on the ground so men could quickly begin building the required structures for the new town.
Anderson went on to serve on the Anchorage City Council and as Mayor from 1956 to 1958. He passed away in 1960, leaving behind a remarkable legacy of enduring infrastructure for the people of Alaska, and a unique contribution to the community of Palmer.
Photos in the museum’s Anton Anderson collection indicate that Anton, his wife Alma and daughters, Jean and Patricia, came to the new Palmer site in 1935. (Their third daughter, Shelby, was born the following year in Palmer.) Some of those photos show the townsite when it was little more than a partially developed homestead brush field.
This month’s “Photo of The Month”, produced by Hewitt’s Photo Shop of Anchorage, shows Anderson and his survey team at their office tent in Palmer in 1936. They are identified, from the left, as Bill Cook, Bob Abernathy, Chief Engineer Anton Anderson, Oliver Kola, a man not yet identified, and Jack O’Malley.
Note: Some information for the above was taken from Wikipedia and from Bruce Parham, “Anderson, Anton A.,” Cook Inlet Historical Society, “Legends and Legacies, Anchorage, 1910-1940.”