Richardson Monument

High up here on Isabel Pass, more than three thousand feet above the sea, stands a monument to the man who built Alaska's first major road. He was General Wilds Richardson, and the highway beneath your wheels carries his name. The route started as a rough gold rush trail in eighteen ninety-eight, threading from the port of Valdez toward the interior gold fields.

By nineteen ten, under Richardson of the Alaska Road Commission, the trail had been upgraded into a real wagon road. Over time it became the Richardson Highway, running about three hundred sixty-eight miles from Valdez all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska's first true highway. From this monument you can look out across the Gulkana Glacier, a reminder of just how wild the country was that Richardson and his road crews fought their way through.