This is the story of a great road, and of the men who built it. Experts claimed for years that it would be impossible to build a highway to Alaska. But when the needs of a world at war demanded that highway, the U.S. Army Engineers were assigned the task of transforming the impossible into an actuality. And they succeeded.

The 1600 miles of highway these men constructed will endure for years as a memorial to their courage, their ingenuity, and their endurance. This book is a sort of footnote to that memorial—a story of brave men who spent long arduous months blasting away mountains, bridging raging icy torrents—living and eating and sleeping with the Road until it was done.

The rigors of a northern winter, the mud and insect pests of working in a wilderness, the special problems of any job that must be done hundreds of miles distant from any source of supplies—all these are woven into the story of their success.

Some day "Alcan" may be part of a great international highway extending from the southernmost tip of South America up through the United States, Canada, Alaska, across Bering Strait and the vast stretches of Siberia down into Europe. When that day comes, the men who built "Alcan" will become international heroes. Now they are our own—and this tale of their fight with a wilderness is as stirring and exciting as any battle in military history.

Description taken from the dust jacket