In the early spring of 1942 Alaska's population was approximately 73,000. About half of those residents were Native Alaskans, members of indigenous groups who inhabited Alaska before it was colonized by Russia.
Ruth Gruber went to Alaska under the auspices of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Gruber describes some of the people she met in Fairbanks, and describes her hopes for bringing settlers to the territory.
In the middle of March 1942, approximately one month after President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the highway, the Army Corps of Engineers began arriving in Alaska.
When the U.S. military decided to assign three African American engineering regiments to the Alaska Highway project, it departed from its usual segregationist policies.
