The military trail is, of necessity, poor enough; but it is infinitely superior to all other trails in Alaska, and is a boon to the prospector. It is a well-defined and well-travelled highway. The trees and bushes are cut in places for a width of thirty feet, original bridges span the creeks when it is possible to bridge them at all, and some corduroy has been laid; but in many places the trail is a mere path, not more than two feet wide, shovelled or blasted from the hillside.
In Alaska there were practically no roads at all until the appointment in 1905 of a road commission consisting of Major W. P. Richardson, Captain G. B. Pillsbury, and Lieutenant L. C. Orchard. Since that year eight hundred miles of trails, wagon and sled roads, numerous ferries, and hundreds of bridges have been constructed. The wagon road-beds are all sixteen feet wide, with free side strips of a hundred feet; the sled roads are twelve feet wide; the trails, eight; and the bridges, fourteen. In the interior, laborers on the roads are paid five dollars a day, with board and lodging; they are given better food than any laborers in Alaska, with the possible exception of those employed at the Treadwell mines and on the Cordova Railroad. The average cost of road work in Alaska is about two thousand dollars a mile; two hundred and fifty for sled road, and one hundred for trails. These roads have reduced freight rates one-half and have helped to develop rich regions that had been inaccessible. Their importance in the development of the country is second to that of railroads only.
The scenery from Ptarmigan Drop down the Tsina River to Beaver Dam is magnificent. Huge mountains, saw-toothed and covered with snow, jut diagonally out across the valley, one after another; streams fall, riffling, down the sides of the mountains; and the cloud-effects are especially beautiful.
Tsina River is a narrow, foaming torrent, confined, for the most part, between sheer hills,—although, in places, it spreads out over low, gravelly flats. Beaver Dam huddles into a gloomy gulch at the foot of a vast, overhanging mountain. Its situation is what Whidbey would have called "gloomily magnificent." In 1905 Beaver Dam was a road house which many chose to avoid, if possible.
The Tiekel road house on the Kanata River is pleasantly situated, and is a comfortable place at which to eat and rest.
For its entire length, the military trail climbs and falls and winds through scenery of inspiring beauty. The trail leading off to the east at Tonsina, through the Copper River, Nizina, and Chitina valleys, is even more beautiful.
Vast plains and hillsides of bloom are passed. Some mountainsides are blue with lupine, others rosy with fireweed; acres upon acres are covered with violets, bluebells, wild geranium, anemones, spotted moccasin and other orchids, buttercups, and dozens of others—all large and vivid of color. It has often been said that the flowers of Alaska are not fragrant, but this is not true.
The mountains of the vicinity are glorious. Mount Drum is twelve thousand feet high. Sweeping up splendidly from a level plain, it is more imposing than Mount Wrangell, which is fourteen thousand feet high, and Mount Blackburn, which is sixteen thousand feet.
The view from the summit of Sour-Dough Hill is unsurpassed in the interior of Alaska. Glacial creeks and roaring rivers; wild and fantastic canyons; moving glaciers; gorges of royal purple gloom; green valleys and flowery slopes; the domed and towered Castle Mountains; the lone and majestic peaks pushing up above all others, above the clouds, cascades spraying down sheer precipices; and far to the south the linked peaks of the Coast Range piled magnificently upon the sky, dim and faintly blue in the great distance,—all blend into one grand panorama of unrivalled inland grandeur.
Crossing the Copper River, when it is high and swift, is dangerous,—especially for a "chechaco" of either sex. (A chechaco is one who has not been in Alaska a year.) Packers are often compelled to unpack their horses, putting all their effects into large whipsawed boats. The halters are taken off the horses and the latter are driven into the roaring torrent, followed by the packers in the boats.