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Show Rough and Ready S - J 1 v v ;,; - ,' 1 t ' . -t. , ',' , N : t 1 t. ' i Typical engineer working for Uncle Sam in the Yukon territories. The first of these was the procedure pro-cedure of initiating construction at various points along the route at the same time, by transporting crews and equipment to strategic locations in March, before the spring breakup break-up of ice and snow made trails and rivers impassable. The second was the employment of aerial surveys, followed by stereoscopic stere-oscopic analysis of aerial photographs photo-graphs and the time-tested and traditional tra-ditional engineer method of ground reconnaissance on foot, with pack-horse pack-horse and dog-train. The third was the use of bulldozers, bull-dozers, tractors and other types of heavy equipment, without which the record for speed and semi-permanent construction could not have been achieved. The primary road was actually established by the powerful pow-erful bulldozers, which plowed through the forests of native spruce, jackpine and aspen as if through cornfields, uprooting and pushing trees literally off a 100-foot cut. Timbers for the construction of bridges, trestles and other structures were felled by the troops and processed pro-cessed by sawmills on the site. Ferries Fer-ries for crossing the many turbulent turbu-lent creeks and streams were improvised im-provised of rafts and pontoons. At one major crossing a large scow was built from forest lumber capable capa-ble of transporting equipment weighing weigh-ing 40 tons. Extremes of Heat and Cold. During March the troops battled bitter winds and temperatures as low as 35 degrees below zero, when it was impossible to drive a tent-peg tent-peg into the frozen ground. During July and August they sweltered under un-der a heat of more than 90 degrees and were forced to wear gloves and net helmets to protect themselves from the swarms of mosquitoes, flies and insect pests. In wet weather weath-er they slogged through bottomless mud; in dry weather portions of the road were shrouded in clouds of alluvial al-luvial dust so fine that no mesh could exclude it. Through it all, however, according accord-ing to official reports from the field, the morale of the men remained high and the job has gone forward at a rate which will bring the road to completion well in advance of the most optimistic estimate. The engineers en-gineers report that the threats of muskeg proved wholly unfounded. Muskeg, a bog moss studded with sedge, has proved to be a minor problem. Most of it has been successfully suc-cessfully skirted and that which was unavoidable has been overcome with corduroy roads. In one particular section of 60 miles in length, reported report-ed to consist principally of muskeg, only four miles of it were encountered. |