The Bridge to Nowhere, Alaska
Welcome to Nowhere, Alaska! Add that to all the colorful monikers for which the town of Ketchikan is known. After years of ridicule and harassment for the planned bridge that would link Ketchikan with isolated Gravina Island (aka “Nowhere”), the project has officially been scrapped, so said Ketchikan’s mayor Joe Williams, Jr. West of Ketchikan, Gravina is a large, essentially uninhabited island; with the exception of some industry on the eastern shore and the world famous Ketchikan International Airport (only place in the world where the control tower is lower than the runway!) no one lives there. It is an open expanse of green trees and black bears. Yet today if you look over at Gravina Island, you will see heavy equipment cutting down trees and building roads. So, what’s going on? I asked Mr. Williams. He said though the bridge will not be built, a new ferry system will go into service connecting the southeast portion of the island. He went on to point out that Ketchikan’s future lies on Gravina Island; the borough of Ketchikan located on Revillagigedo Island is hemmed in on the east by the Tongass National Forest and on the west by Tongass Narrows; the only direction the city can grow is north-south along the narrow strip of land parallel to the sea. Soon all the available land will be gone and the city will need to move west onto Gravina Island if it is ever to expand. Mr. Williams said the roads being built are for logging and will eventually include helicopter logging – good for Ketchikan’s lagging economy. Cynics in the capital city of Juneau have a different opinion about the roads and point to the fact that most of the land to which they will lead belong to influential Anchorage lawmakers who stand to gain the most from Ketchikan’s eventual population overflow. It was their urging that Congress approve the pork-barrel “Bridge to Nowhere” and it will be them not the residents of Ketchikan who will benefit the most. Hmmm… politics.