being alone and with family. and i think that's not something you necessarilylose . but it's possible to i think maintain a modern life like i said earlier, like nuns and priests, you have to work at it. thank you very much. [applause] >> as part of our year-long 50 capitals tour, the c-span bus made the long journey to juneau alaska, capital of the 49 state. this week on tv and american history tv we feature our path across alaska showing you the state's natural beauty and we delve into alaska's unique history and

literary culture . >> welcome to a special presentation of our c-span cities tour as we take you to alaska, known as the last year, it's the largest state in the us and 50 percent is over 663 square miles is land administered as part of the national parks system. it has a population of 740,000.

the united states urges alaska from russia in1867 and admitted as the 49th state in 1959 . with the help of our dci cable partners, the next two hours we will visit juneau, fairbanks and anchorage to learn about the history and culture of the state from local authors. >> .. >> .. on the coast of alaska by burying multiple thermonuclear bombs. they would blow up his gigantic crater a mile-long, all this dirt be ejected as high as the stratosphere. this he would rush in and you would have this instant harbor.

it might glow-in-the-dark but it would be a harbor. the atomic energy commission was part of the federal government and they were an agency of almost unlimited power, and limited funding. guys told me we didn't consider, we had and to anybody but the te president, not the congress, not anybody. so they had never been sorted in anything they wanted to do until project chariot. and it was a little band, a little village, eskimo people who gave them their first defeat. it is literally like these atomic scientists came up to alaska with nuclear bombs in the back pocket and they were faced down by guys with harpoons. a brilliant physicist him out of hungary and had fled the nazis and had come to america, and was

set up along with a lot of other brilliant physicists in the manhattan project to develop america's first nuclear bomb, which we use hiroshima and nagasaki, and aided in the ending of world war ii. teller was a bit of a renegade. in fact, he was pretty much unmanageable at the manhattan project and he had to be turned loose from the team effort to build the first fission bomb, and allowed to work on his own projects which was being -- very interested in a thermonuclear bomb, the fusion bomb. ultimately he wasn't very cooperative and so company with such a powerful force and such a powerful physicist that they set it up with his own laboratory essentially out in livermore

where los alamos continue to develop most of the fission and the fusion bombs. of course it was all secret until the first explosions. there was one test in new mexico but nobody knew what it was. and then there were the two bombs dropped in japan towards the end end of the war. there was a lot of sentiment probably to hail the advent of the atomic as a very positive thing. for one thing, maybe at some of the political people argued, war would become obsolete because these weapons were too powerful. no one would dare use them. of course we just had. so there was a great euphoria actually about this time over all things atomic to the point where atomic physicist or look to as enlightened people on how we commenced our educational system in the country and all

sorts of things about which they knew nothing really. and remember perhaps, you don't remember, but you've read and seen the pictures of the atomic café, the atomic cocktail and sputnik, when sputnik went around the world, the satellites and the whole era of looking towards space into the atomic future. electricity with said to be, soon to be too cheap to meter. it would all be free. they would be nuclear airplanes and nuclear powered ships and this great era was going to be ushered in. what nobody was paying much attention to was the really devastating contamination that comes from the whole nuclear process for mining uranium all the way through any kind of explosion or power generation in a nuclear power plant. we have toxic waste that will outlast civilization that needs

to be managed beyond the lifespan of civilization. so that was all happening, that was part of the cultural push for this sort of thing, but then emerging in the late '50s, people began to associate fallout from atmospheric testing with certain human problems, disease problems. and there was being proposed nuclear test ban treaties for the world. and that would have shut down the opportunity for guys like teller to test nuclear weapons, at least in the open air. but if you could convince people that i peaceful use of nuclear weapons was a positive thing, it had relatively good public support, then under the name peaceful use, he could continue to test, develop, refine what

were explosives that could be used as weapons. it's likely they came to alaska for a couple of reasons. one, they wanted it to be remote. touching off a nuclear bomb, things get shook, there's radiation release. there's a seismic, yeah, seismic effect but there's also just the shock wave above ground that will knock things over. so they wanted a remote place and, of course, if anything went wrong you want to see people around as possible. it's also possible that they felt like alaskans had very little political clout and couldn't really about much of aa protest, and that would've been amplified in the village of eskimo people who were nonwhite, non-proficient in english language, few in number, in every metric of political influence they were wronged here i think that wasn't lost on these guys. the atomic energy commission

asked the u.s. geological survey to look around, , where would ba good place that might be relatively remote or actually quite remote, villa -- were harbor might be useful or where geology might sustain such an excavation. there really isn't very many good sites in arctic alaska support a harbor. the bering sea is very shallow for the most part. gnome is a very little town. they would like to put one near gnome but it didn't work out. they ended up picking a spot near the glove called thompson and a little tiny creek called -- they justified it by saying that there were fish stocks that could be exploited up there but there was no harbor for safe haven for fishermen. also there were natural

resources like coal that could be exported if there was a harbor. but the reality was that, that harbor would have been rosen solid for nine months of the year and the really were no fish docks in that area that were commercially exploitable. and they were going to place the bombs in the creek am basicalle mouth of the creek in estrin, blow up a big channel that would have, initially it was going to be 2.4 megatons of energy. now, that's the equivalent of 2.4 million tons of tnt. and i calculated once that if you loaded all that tnt on one ton flatbed trucks and a convoy literally bumper-to-bumper, it would stretch from fairbanks, alaska, to southern argentina, bumper-to-bumper. so a big wallop, something like

40% of all the firepower expended in world war ii touched off in a single instance. so it would be, let's see, i think there were four a little bombs at six hiroshima each if you can imagine, and two big bombs at 60 hiroshima each. this would have created the kind of epic contamination that undoubtedly would mean that the eskimo people were quite a radius around there. certainly tens of miles, scores of miles that would never go back, whatever the wind happen to be blowing that day would have been pasted with contamination many, many times greater than chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear accident. the place with effect is ogotoruk creek, had a couple of

little huts that were occupied seasonally by the local eskimo, eskimo people who might travel in that direction, caribou hunting. the bluffs themselves were utilized to collect seabird eggs pick the people lived a substances life and gathered eggs and fish and, of course, well, there most famous for hunting sea mammals, wales, walrus, beluga and caribou in the hills. nobody was a permanent resident of the nearest village was a town called point hope, is the name it's been given. it's on a spit of land that part back towards asia where the people came from, and their villages are at the tip of that and it is apparently the oldest

continuously occupied site in north america, goes back centuries, and it was established and maintained because of its position relative to the migration of bowhead whales. touching a bowhead whale could sustain a village for quite a while, you know, thousands of pounds of meat which they could store in underground cellars frozen. and so word went out that there were surveyors up at ogotoruk creek. i wonder what they're doing? little by little word filtered back from fairbanks and anchorage where taylor and his entourage did explain the project. finally it filtered back to the people who would been most affected by it, the native people of point hope. so when they learned about it, their immediate reaction was resistance and they demanded that the delegation come talk to them.

that happened in march of 1960, half a dozen or so men from the atomic energy commission and some scientist they recruited went up there to explain the project to the eskimo people. they were not pleased, and they basically said we don't want it. and when we say that, we mean it. a little woman, little, i mean, four-foot plus was very -- stood up and said we are pretty sure you don't want to bomb your place where you live, just gave them hell. and so they said they wanted one of the commissioners to come up, they had five commissions and they said we want one of those guys to come up here to explain it to us, and that happen. the people were very smart and

they tape recorded everything, which very unusual, very shocking to these guys when they came in the suits and went up to the head table, two tape recorders were running. and basically the atomic energy commission people lied to the people of point hope about the effects of nuclear weapons testing in the pacific and its affect on animals, food animals and on people. and it's on tape. they knew better. you can go to atomic energy commission publications of that day and see if they knew better when they told the eskimo people otherwise. they painted a very benign picture at the effect on human health and on the food animals. the eskimo people have the own sources of information. they read life magazine.

some of them had served in the military, so one was even a member of the cleanup crew at nagasaki. they were not without sources of information, and so they challenged what they were hearing, and later got more information and ended up writing a letter to president kennedy, and writing letters to the atomic energy commission and the secretary of interior, and they told secretary of interior, we claimed this land as our land, and you who administer the federal public lands hold it in trust for us until it's adjudicated, and you can't get it to become a nuclear wasteland legally. and they were right.

i think it's quite fascinating that the atomic energy commission, i don't know if anybody has ever done a study of this, but it think that they were one of the very early professional practitioners of public relations. they really understood how to get into the conversation widely in the public. they had speakers bureaus. they had little magazines for children who come to the schools. they have people go to the schools. they had professional pr people on staff. they made films, commercials. you see some of them and archives today, you know, the sunny side of the atom. our friend the adam. all this stuff. cartoons a lot of them. sprightly music and cheerful little episodes of wonders of the atom. and they of course worked very hard with an alaska among the

people they called the opinion shapers. and so they worked over the press, and the press was very taken by the argument of the atomic scientists so that all the major newspapers in the state were very gung ho for project chariot. the president and board of regents of the states university was in favor of it and essentially the president told, not essentially, literally he told his professors if the united states government says it's safe, that's all we need to hear. which is antithetical to the notion of what site is and what he university is. nevertheless, he was a big booster. it meant federal dollars come into the state and into his university. met growth and development. and in this city and in this

state, development is a byword if we can get federal dollars to build and grow, it's a sin to oppose it. the state of alaska broadly endorsed the project. a scientist at the university and the conservationists ratcheted up their opposition, and one of the outcomes of all that was that tellers group did find a series of scientific studies at ogotoruk creek, maybe to placate the objective scientist at una, maybe because they thought they were important. it's not completely clear. but what is clear is that they put together the most comprehensive array of environmental studies prior to a project that had ever been done, i think ever anywhere. so it essentially prefigured the modern environment impact report

which would not be required until after the passage of the national environment policy act in 1970. 1970. this was in the late '50s. so that's another thing that came out of chariot that's quite historic. it meant that you were going to understand the effect of what you're going to do before you did it. that was a milestone in policy. and at ogotoruk creek these studies included geology, hydrology, soils. they had bird studies, mammal studies, fish, the weather, studies of all kinds and studies to include the human use of that area by the native people and their subsistence lifestyle. so 42 different studies, the book the result is this thick, and what they started to show,

what some of these scientists coming at a fairbanks here started to show was that around the world there have been problems with radiation moving up through the food chain to man. in the lower states when fallout, say from atmospheric test in nevada or somewhere, would dump dust, radioactive dust onto plants like grass and cows would eat the grass, present it in their body, pretend it's in the milk, some of this is metabolized like nutrients. cc 137 is an analogue of calcium and it can end up in your bones. analog of potassium can end up in your muscles. there were tissues of these animals were becoming radioactive, so was the milk and so was people. in the arctic it was different though because in the lower

latitudes of grasslands, grass dies off every year, whatever was in the grass is now in soil and then the new plants might take some of those radio nuclear eyes substance think your niches but they tend to discriminate against them somewhat. in alaska we didn't have grass plants. we had tundra, and humdrum plants contained a lot of what are called lichens and they are a spongy little, funny little plant that is rootless essentially and grabs its mineral nutrition from airborne dust. so it's sitting there designed to capture follow any particles is coming down. and incorporating it into tissues. it didn't buy off every year. it could live 70 years. so now you have a caribou coming around eating lichen and he may graze over many acres, and he's

collecting the fallout that his conduct not just just this year but in all previous years going back decades. concentrated that into his body. now, about that yet the eskimo guy who i think they used to eat on the order of seven caribou each year. some number like that. and so now you are concentrating those even further. so the arctic food lab was much faster than in the lower states and the radiation could go in bigger quantities have to enter people. they figured this out by looking at studies done in canada and in the scandinavian countries, and they started to make noise about this. and that changed a lot, the momentum of the project. even though the aec had

carefully not design studies to test that here, i think not accidentally either, but these guys were aware of the literature from abroad. so these problematic food -- it started to back up a little bit. simultaneously, the eskimo protest was getting national play. the "new york times" was reported on it. "time" magazine, the conservation movement was whipping up, now sierra club bulletin had a whole issue on it, three, four, five, six magazines are talking about it. so now it's starting to be in public relations terms, costly for the aec. they probably could have done it because they did everything they ever wanted to do before, but i think it became too costly pr problem for them to continue to push it.

at the same time there were development happening. this is getting delayed year after your death because of these protests and the length of the studies, that they're doing more testing and nevada and they are learning some things that the chariot explosion would have taught them. so there's less need for it, from their point of view. and so the all of a sudden declare that it's not necessary anymore, we might do it but we might not come but we'll hold it in avail. in fact, you can see that behind the scenes when you get declassify documents, you can see that this was a quite orchestrated from the pr standpoint that they had a big test in nevada designed to answer some of the questions chariot would do, they could do anything they wanted in nevada. they had the test site there. there was nobody breaking down the neck like in alaska.

they shot off 100 kilotons explosion at which made a quite a big enough you could easily floating aircraft carrier in. it's huge, i've been to the edge of it, look down, it's massive. dust from that caused the people in st. george utah to have to turn on the streetlights midday all of that radioactive dust went all the way into canada in violation of the atmospheric test ban treaty. and immediately on explosion of that shot which was called the sudan blast, they released a press release saying it's answered the question chariot was going to give us and we don't need chariot. i saw that this memo, this press release was written before the explosion. so there are clearly trying to withdraw from project chariot and save as much face as they could and never use the word cancel. to this day, 50 years later they not sent its canceled.

edward teller went on to become arguably the most influential scientists in america in the 20th century. he was an ardent opponent of whatever test ban treaty might be put forward, any sort of arms control here he was an ardent hawk. and whenever we had a republican administration, his stock rose and he became essentially counselor to every republican president. when we would get a democrat he would return to his laboratory. but even into the george bush, george w. bush era i think he got the presidential medal of freedom from george w. bush. he was a very renowned,

respected and listened to elder in the scientific and in the nuclear arms community. interestingly, he came back to alaska in the late '80s. it was when reagan was pushing star wars, which was a space based missile defense system using lasers. it was all something concocted on the back of an envelope practically. $100 billion later no such system exists, and the one they do have is faulty, , too, but that's another story. anyway, tell her thought why not based some of these laser, i think they were missiles, but also a laser component, some laser armament and missiles on the north slope of alaska.

because it strategic is a a god place. it's right between russia and the u.s. up their high up in the arctic, and also it's not a warm place that generates a lot of cloud coverage site of a lot of clear days there. for a number of sensible reasons he thought that would be a great place basic. so he came back to alaska to visit the north slope and check it out. so i was struck, i was in the work on project chariot then, i was working on this book and i thought here he comes back again with a defense related, high-tech project to protect america if alaska will go a long. there's a lot of similarities, and some of their devices involved nuclear explosions in space, too. but any case, it had a lot of some letters to the project

chariot think of decades earlier, so i was able to interview him. i got on his schedule down in anchorage, went down there with a film crew and we got 8.5 minutes into the interview before he said, then we take a break? we shut down the machine and it just exploded. he went off like his own nuclear blast, cursing and yelling at me and outraged that i would ask him tough questions about project chariot, which are perfectly appropriate. they were perfectly legitimate journalistic questions. it's just that nobody ever really did that to him, and he hollered that he had a perfect interview this morning where the reporter let me talk about anything i wanted. i thought, well, we've got plenty of that. what we don't have is putting his feet to the fire on project chariot a little bit. so he too is outcome and just

before the door slam i heard him tearing up his release. and that recording in the archives, though can't really be used without his permission which he never gave. his reaction was his answer, that there was no good answer from him about project chariot, that it was problematic, it did make sense. it had enormous potential to pollute. it was a proposed for the reasons they gave. the whole thing was nonsense from start to finish, and he did not have a good response. i believe that's why he did what he did. in fairness, teller was undoubtedly a patriot, and very high if not, the list of his motivations is to protect

america. i think he had come he gave way too many lesser motors as well, but he was doing what he thought was right. his problem was that he thought it was better to keep the public unaware of what he was doing for the good of the country as he saw it. and in so doing he usurped the basic prerogative of a democracy. that's not how it works pick you to get to keep information from us and decide for us what's best for us. we get to decide. even if we are imperfect, even if we don't know all you know, we do not our prerogative to authorities or experts. that's the whole nature of our government. he didn't quite get that. we have to be in charge of our faith. as part of the bargain of democracy. we have to pay attention and where to stand up and argue, we have to fight. because a free society has to be

a skeptical one. that's the way to protect our freedom. >> about proper straightaway is only area ran in southeastern alaska that rises 1800 feet, dock and downtown juneau to the top of mount roberts. up next we visit the sealaska heritage institute children history of the native people of southeastern alaska. ♪ [speaking in native tongue] >> my ancient name is -- it's

been lost in time, many other. my ceremonial name is -- it means a woman who stand in the place of a man. i an ego from the thunderbird clan and i'm from the house lord on the sun. i love to welcome people to southeast alaska, the home of that -- we have about 30,000 tribal members, and about half of them live in southeast alaska and then elsewhere. largely in the northwest, the seattle area. we had a very rich complex society. we traded a lot with our neighbors to the north and to the south and into the interior. and a great entrepreneurs and also want to note it was the women who control the trade and if the women didn't approve of the trade, they could negate a trade transaction. we were very active it went very

large wooden canoes that we could transport all the way down to washington into the oregon area and then also we were expanding westward into prince william sound. so it was a very large society, very complex. and then the russians gain and actually we had, it was a mutually beneficial relationship with the russians, as long as they stayed in the fort at night then and didn't try to claim ownership of our land. we like the ability to trade, and we traded that only with the russians but also other european groups that were coming to southeast alaska. but we were trading for material and then incorporating it into our culture. our culture as a result group. some people like to say that even art flourished because we

are able to have steel and things to help us refine our art. but it was still very much a native culture, traditional culture. but was only when the americans came where they began to think that they need to change our culture. and i'm sure that others have heard about the assimilationist policy when they wanted to suppress native culture and assimilate us into the larger society. we definitely wanted the benefits of a larger society. i think where like other people who want the best of both. our people were also very clear in that they saw value in our culture. they wanted our traditional culture to persist. with the initial contact with the americans, they at first acknowledged our traditional laws. for example, if there was a

dispute and we demanded the payment of some sort of payment, the military would actually pay us. as the trained it gained in strength in terms of numbers -- united states date in strength in terms of numbers of people in alaska been the decision was made they didn't need to adhere to our laws, and so they then began to impose their lost on us. at that point in time, and visit the be in the late 1800s, early 1900s, we said we really need to deal with these laws that are affecting us. we form a voluntary organization, the alaska native brotherhood, and we decided that we did to become very politically involved. our people were taught how to speak english, great stories about how they would spell cat.

they wanted to learn english and i remember they would say who can spell cat? one person said i can. act. anyway, the idea is that wanted to learn about western culture so that they could begin to influence those institutions that were having an adverse impact on us. they became very politically active. we actually i i like to think t the civil rights movement began here in southeast alaska in 1912 where we began to fight the discriminatory laws, the policies that were trying to change us and get rid of our native culture. one of the missions that we have here at sealaska heritage institute is to promote cross-cultural understanding. and we take that very seriously. not only do we want to perpetuate and enhance our

cultures, we want to teach non-natives about our culture. because our thesis is that the shame of being an native person came from the outside, came from the teacher, and from the missionaries, came from the policemen. it would start at a very personal level where i i was actually taken from a family and put into a missionary school, and orphanage of all things, and here i had such a large family, but this is the attempt again to say that the way you live, your cultural values, your cultural practices are not worthy or pagan, and you need to be changed. and so i was removed to school. you know, it still today a lot of our people suffer from that. a lot of our people were placed in boarding schools, and we are

feeling the suffering with the intergenerational trauma from that time. it wasn't a happy time. there was signed no need is allowed. i remember as a young lady going into the stores, in tearing down the sides, no need is allowed. actually when we were building this building the city didn't like the font of the signed with the outcome future home of, and i was angry. i said go and find me that song the said no need is allowed and i said will use the same thought it was acceptable then it would be acceptable today. it was very real. it was, you know, anti-discrimination act was enacted for very real reasons. when we would go to the movies we would have to sit in the back. i mention we went to segregated schools. it was very real.

♪ >> celebration is a four-day event in which we celebrate the survival of our culture. after decades of outside forces trying to suppress our culture, we like to make the statement that he we are, our culture is strong, it's vibrant, it's a four-day celebration that includes dance, song, workshops on different aspects of our culture, even a food contest. i don't know if people were here in southeast alaska attended our celebration, they would've heard our young children speaking our language. we are well on the way to restoring our language. we still have a long way to go. i would say they are really becoming a model in terms of

cultural language, restoration. our cultures are vibrant. i wear my different jewelry to show who i am. it identifies the eye and an eagle. i am a thunderbird. i have this special relationship to the sun. i have spirits that healthy. so i would say that our culture is strong, and if people had seen celebration 2018 i think they would have agreed with me. >> fairbanks is located in alaska's interior and his two hours north of mount mckinley. with a population of nearly 33,000 it's the state second-most populous metropolitan area. fairbanks is a military hub with fort wainwright located within city limits. it's also known for its rich gold deposits which led to a gold rush at the turn of the 20th century.

next we continue our special look at alaska as a learn about the building of the transatlantic pipeline from dermot cole, author of "amazing pipeline stories." >> we hear about the midway point of the transatlantic pipeline. the project is 800 miles long and oil was discovered on the north slope of alaska in 1968. this was the largest oil field of that in north america, and the instant that knowledge spread, everyone knew this was going to change the state of alaska for good. the pipeline came about after sort of a long series of course delays and bureaucratic delays and really environmental battle over the future of alaska. and when congress acted in 1973, which? it was about the time of the

arab oil embargo, that really change the politics but after congress acted in 73, pipeline construction moved it really rapidly. it began in 1974 and was completed in the summer of 1977. so looking back at it it was a fairly intense and rapid time of the instruction that really transform the state. in the early 1900s gold was really what brought a lot of newcomers to alaska. of course there was an indigenous population here for hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of years, but that will begin to change in the early 1900s with the gold discoveries. that really helps with up until about world war i. and after that time began a slow transition to what was really, you get sick and was sort of a government dependence in many ways. the alaska railroad was built

during the world war i era, and its construction really made a town like fairbanks sustainable because for the first time there was a, it was impossible to get decent transportation from the coast into the injury of alaska and was possible to ship cargo and freight here. that really gave it sort of an economic basis. with the arrival of world war ii and since that time, there's been a heavy military presence in alaska. and that is ongoing to this day. so the government economy has long been a major element here, and that did begin to change with the discovery of oil. since this was the largest oil field of event in north america,

the peak production was about 2 million barrels per day in 1988 and it's been steadily declining since that time. today it is about one quarter of that level. but it still a lot of money and it's still the basis of how the state economy operates. with government both federal, state and local government may be sort of a secondary option. the pipeline begin at a proto-k which is on the north coast of alaska, and to the east of the arctic national wildlife refuge which is been in the news for many decades now with the oil expiration should be allowed. for the public begins at prudhoy and it proceed more or less straight south to valdez. after all it was discovered the oil companies, the maid of companies that had leases on a north slope got together and formed the pipeline service company which is a consortium of these major oil companies, and

they sort of as a committee, they agreed to get this build. oil companies usually don't like to cooperate with each other. they are bitter competitors in many ways, but in this case they had to cooperate in order to get their oil to market. they knew that. i went on there were seven oil companies in this consortium. today it is only bp, exxon and conoco phillips. pipeline is 800 miles long and about half of it is above ground. a good rule of thumb is wherever it is above ground, the soil conditions are not very good. this took about, if you include the financing charges, about $10 million in the 1970s, which today would be more than $30 billion. this pipeline was really the first major test of the

environmental protection agency which had just been created in the nixon administration, and grew out of the growing recognition that the environment needed to be protected. the original proposal on the pipe and was that the entire length would be buried, and it was really excited geological survey and others, scientist, who said you can't do that because of the poor seoul conditions and you do elevate the pipeline. so this technology that you see he was developed in response to environmental worries that if you want this thing to last and not damage the environment, you had to dig lots of special precautions. the fins on these tubes you see are designed to help keep the soil frozen far underneath where we're standing, and to keep the pipeline stable. the pipeline is built on these

companies set appear so it can move back and forth in case of an earthquake. we do have earthquakes here and to do move the pipeline from side to side, but it has had a strong and good environmental record. now, notable exception to all that was the exxon valdez oil spill in which is not a minor thing at all. it was a major catastrophe, and while that was not on the land portion of the 800-mile project, it was part of the system. to understand the time in which is a bill, it's good to go back and remember what happened in the 1970s. the opec oil embargo of the early 1970s really shook up the united states. the gas lines that occurred created real political uncertainty and help really build the momentum to get congress to approve this project. and once that happened the oil

companies knew that they had billions of barrels of oil waiting to get to market, but they wouldn't be making any money and they wouldn't be able to profit on that at all until the pipeline was finished. so they built it as quickly as they could do it. in order to get the project built as quick as possible, which is really what the oil companies want to do because they wouldn't be making any money, they wouldn't be getting any money back until the first barrel of oil got shipped out of valdez. submit an agreement with labor unions, they wanted labor peace and the one equity to work together and he wanted to do it rapidly. so that's why the construction went on seven days a week, throughout the year, multiple shifts most of the tiger at the peak employment with late 1975, there were 28,000 people employed from one end of project to the other, which is the

largest single fingers going on in alaska at the time. no conversation took place in fairbanks in those years without the word pipeline coming up within 30 seconds or so, let's say. the town was really overrun by construction workers, and when there were 20,000 people employed, maybe over the years 70,000 people worked on the project because many of them work for a short time, quit, someone else came in to replace them. a lot of people who lived in fairbanks which event a fairly sedate down really had trouble adjusting to this because there were no real roads around fairbanks at the time. most of the roads that were built in the community, there was a four-lane highway, came about after the project. so traffic jams, believe it or not, and the small-town were a huge nightmare because everything was congested.

the turnover at jobs in town was severe. in fact, there was a joke in one bank about giving tellers seniority pans is a state on the job for a month it was just like constant turnover, constant turmoil in the community and all sorts of problems that came from this really invasion. that's what everybody referred to as, , an invasion of construction workers from outside. the construction workers were here because the money was good. so oil flow began in june of 1977, and what alaska discovered after that was, something we should have known all along but it was really hit home with the iranian hostage situation and the iranian oil crisis that occurred in the late '70s.

and that is what oil money really began flowing into alaska after the price of oil shot up. thanks to that conflict in iran. and that begin a repeat pattern. alaska was suddenly its economy was directly impacted in a major way by events that took place thousands of miles from here. in other words, we became instantly tied to the world's oil market, and alaska no control over the oil market. it was sort of along for the ride, for better or for worse. the oil on the north slope was found on state land. so maybe the original really toss for the state of alaska was that when alaska became a state and was given an option of choosing certain lands, the geologists early on figured this land on the north slope would be

good to select. so had they not selected victim alaska's economy would've been an entirely different than it is today. but the state geologists selected that land, and then leased it to the all companies. what that meant was alaska retained a royalty or an ownership interest in the oil on that land. so what eight of the oil belongs to the state -- about one-eighth. so the state have light on that 1/8 share, a cache cache sound of it, to help run its government, plus the severance tax that the state collects on the rest of the oil. so the severance tax and the royalty oil have about two many tens of billions of dollars over the years and really provided the economic power to the state economy. in the 1970s there was great

concern all this oil money would flow in and it would be spent immediately. the state adopted a constitutional amendment to save a percentage of its royalties. and created what it called the alaska permanent fund and that was established in 1977 and it is still collecting millions of dollars each year going into that account. and in 1980 created this very unique system by which residence receive a check each year from the earnings of the alaska permanent fund. it's called alaska permanent fund dividend and is the one part of state government that is universally popular in alaska. one of the things that struck me was how often people would say that the environmentalists would say putting this pipeline income this is like putting a scar across the mona lisa. that's the kind of language that was used at the time.

the supporters of the said no, it's like a thread across a basketball gym, right? that would be giveaways people that looking at it. the sort of the intensity of environmental fight and the bitterness of it that occurred in the 1970s has really faded into the background here now. it has become an accepted part of the background, like telephone poles and wires and that sort of thing. in some ways it's normal i guess, you just get, become accustomed to what you see around you and you get the idea that it's always been there. this is a popular tourist viewpoint here are thousands of people come every year to take a look at the pipeline to see it up close.

it's a real symbol of modern alaska in many ways, and it changes the state culturally and economically. >> mendenhall is a 13-mile long glacier located in juneau, alaska. it's one of 38 glaciers located in the juneau ayes. the glaciers of southeastern alaska alone discharge enough water to fill 40 million olympic size swimming pools are . i would learn about the exxon valdez oil spill that affected portion of the alaskan coast. >> i woke up in my home which was a nice suburb of and was all over the news. by the time i got to work i knew all about it. the first reaction was disbelief, how could this happen? and the second reaction was just

shocked at the enormity of it. they spill i think 11 million gallons of oil and covered like 11,000 square miles of ocean before it was done. the scale was inconceivable until it happen. >> where were you working and what was your job? >> i worked for the anchorage daily news and i was a reporter at the time primarily doing investigative work but also covering business. so i had covered oil even before the spill. >> and you tell us what a history of the oil industry was in alaska? how large was it? >> the modern oil industry that we know today got its start in 1967 1967 when it was a huge oil strike at prudhoe bay. pipeline begin operating in 1973 and that's when the taker traffic in prince william sound begin. so about 16, 15 years passed before this spill. the oil industry and alaska from

the day oil was discovered had an enormous mind share in the statement was instantly recognized as the biggest source of funding for state government. for a long time it was the only source that mattered. the oil industry produced money so fast into state coffers one of the jokes was even the alaska legislator couldn't waste at all. some of it was accumulated and will recall the permanent fund. a lot of it was spent on state services. so the oil industry besides generating all this money took an acute interest in politics because they are always interested in taxes, ending regulation. so over time that influence over the legislature became enormous and it was almost mandatory to be oil friendly, to get elected to the legislature in the state. >> who were some of the big companies operating out of your?

>> that big three were and are ep, exxon mobil, and conoco phillips. over time the names have changed as companies merge and absorbed each other, so early in the day what's now conoco was really arco. but the big three players have changed have not changed. the big two two rbp and exxon. >> you mentioned that influence over the legislature. did that mean for regulations regarding oil in the state? >> back then it was always an enormous battle to get any new regulation in place, and the trend really ran in the opposite direction. regulations can do to get looser, not part of the then there was a factor in what happened in the oil spill. most regulation having to do with the operation of that taker, the exxon valdez, were federal in origin and focused.

the regulations having to do with cleanup, on the other hand, were fundamentally at the state level and that was part of the problem that regulation big part of the problem to the federal oversight of tanker operations was too loose and that's why the tanker hit the reef. the state oversight of cleanup readiness were to lose and that's why the company that runs the system in prince when sound, the tanker terminal and escort togs, questions and prepared for a cleanup. so for the first three days or so there were essentially no cleanup effort. and there was ideal cleanup weather. that uncharacteristically for prince when sound at the time of the year they had three days of really good weather after the spill and you have this glossy lake of oil just spreading out from that tanker and essentially nothing happening to clean it up. >> can you explain to the people who are watching how does the oil process work?

where does the oil pulled from and then why wasn't even on a tanker and then where was i going? >> sure your the oil was produced on alaska's north slope, which is up in the arctic, really a harsh climate, harsh environment, tundra frost, permafrost country. so it's hard to operate in. you have to be careful not to disrupt things. there's a population of caribou and polymeric up to the has to. oil industry has done a pretty good job on that part of it. ..

>> and their floated on oil tankers and shipped to markets from the us west coast. i think the exxon valdez was headed for long beach andit was carrying about 53 million gallons of oil so it lost about two percent of its cargo . and the rest is history, sadly's can we talk about what happened on that day? >> sure. the tanker exxon valdez a little bit before midnight sailed out of valdez in prince william sound and that 12:0 4 am on 24 march which was good friday it a reef which was a well marked navigational hazard in prince william sound. what had happened before earlier in the day, there had been reports of anson the tanker lines so the captain

requested permission to deviate from the tanker lanes to avoid these icebergs in case they were still there so it's a fairly tricky maneuver but nothing unusual, it happened all the time and the failure was returned to the tanker lanes at the proper point and instead the ship sailed intothe reef . there were conditions on the ship that contributed to the accident. the master was a guy named joe hazlewood. it was always a question as to whether he was drinking and if he was drinking, was it a factor? that was never established fairly and i kind of doubt it myself. what he did was to put the third mate in charge of the bridge . and to do paperwork. the tanker cruise and this is identified as one of the anchors in the accident

worked very hard. the size of the crews had been reduced over the years but there was a battle with fatigue and overwork and distress with these crews and that was identified as a contributing factor. the third mate was in charge of the bridge and wasn't qualified to be doing what he was doing what he, again, it comes back to the workload and skinniness of the crews on those tankers and all those thingsprogressed after the still and theoretically remedied and we haven't had another one so perhaps they were . >> how much oil was thetanker carrying and how much spilled out ? >> it had about 53 million gallons on board and they usually measure cargo tankers and barrels so that was a quarter of 1 million barrels and the spill it lost about 11 million gallons which i think was around 250,000 barrels. the question of how much it lost has been controversial though the number i gave you

is really the generally accepted figure. the reason it's hard to figure out how much oil it lost is that as oil came out, water came in and it was hard to get an exact measurement how much it lost. >> you mentioned this happened in prince william sound. where is that located and if people had visited there prior to the oil, what would they have found? >> it is located on the gulf of alaska. it's a couple hundred miles south of anchorage, north to south is probably in the middle of the state it's this beautiful expanse of enclosed waters with islands and peninsulas and coastlines and rich population of sea birds and fish and animals, pears, theotters and so on . and anyone who's ever visited prince william sound has just

been stunned by the natural beauty and relatively untouched by man. you don't see much development at all. normally you'd see a few fishing boats, cargo vessels coming in with containers to the container port in valdez but very little touch from the hand of man so you have this tanker that's filled with oil and fouled everything in sight and it was just a shock to the conscience into the consciousness, how could this happen? >> when oil spilled into a large body of water like that, what does it do to it and how fast does it travel, do we know? >> the oil in and of itself doesn't travel very fast. it flows on the top and is carried by currents.

it doesn't tend to disperse if the water is calm but if you get a storm as happened in prince william sound then it gets turned up by the way ways and mixes into the water so when that happens is a threat to fish and plankton and so on in the water. when it's in the service it's a threat to see otters and whales. and after it floats around for a while and the wind turns it up,it's the beaches and destroys the beach ecosystem . >> when was i guess exxon alerted that the still had happened and when did the efforts to try and stop it begin? >> i'm sure that exxon was alerted immediately by the crew of the ship . where leaking oil. i know for a fact that the captain got on the radio and called the coast guard guard in valdez immediately and he said we are hard around and evidently we are leaking some oil and he said on the radio

that he was going to try and rock the boat and get off the seas which was just a terrifying possibility. the ship was badly damaged and there is a good chance it would have some or capsize if he had succeeded in doing that. he did so this ship stayed on the reef and continue to leak oil. the response effort began almost immediately. the problem was there were so few resources and boats and booms and cleanup equipment available that not much could be done it started from a tiny beginning and ramped up over the rest of that spring and summer . >> whose responsibility was it for the oil spill or did exxon have a plan? >> a response plan? >> did alaska have a response plan? >> the responsibility fell on exxon as the shipper . in valdez, the response plan

at least in the immediate aftermath of the spill is carried out by alastair pipeline companywhen there's a still , at the time the response was for i believe the first three days of the response effort so they are the ones who send out the boats and booms and cleanup equipment to clean up the mess and prevent it from spreading and after that first three days, the seller is supposed to take over management ofthe response and exxon did that after a relatively shorttime , was exxon running the spill . >> what the process of cleaning up oil? what has to be done and what are some of the challenges for an oil spill of that magnitude? >> it's oversimplified at it, there are two aspects of cleanup. one is containment, try not to let it spread any further

than it has. the other is removal. and both are very difficult. we had a huge area that had spilled oil on it and some of the oil, a lot of the oil in most itself in the sand and gravel and plans and all that stuff so removal was very difficult. one of the responses to the spill was to use something called a dispersant and the name of the dispersant used was corrected and what a dispersant is supposed to do is to the oil once it gets into the water, the tiny smaller globules be processed by bacteria and so on in the water. oil is an organic substance and given enough time it makes the world reprocessed into harmless things. the problem is collection is poisonous itself and it's not clear that it did what it was supposed to. there's evidence that what we

ended up with was not one poison in the ground but 2. it was an abysmal failure. so they noticed all the oil on the beach of course and they had two solutions to that. thewater bridge was ridiculous and one of which was deadly .the ridiculous one and there's a lot of photographs in this and the video is to hire people to go out on the beach with towels and white the oil off the rocks. which they did. the second thing they did was they decided what we will do is we will get high pressure water washers and we will blast these oil breaches with this hot water and wash the oil back intothe water and then we can clean it up . they may have cleaned up some oil that way. they did further damage to the ecosystems on these beaches with hot water that was hot and also probably

drove some of the oil deeper into the sand so the cleanup was for the most part an abysmal failure. i think i recall some lame that maybe 15 percent of the oil but that's just a wild guess, nobody really knows. it's fair to say that for the most part, the cleanup effort was a pr effort. to show america and the world that something was being done to clean up this oil. one of the exxon officials said soon after the spill that they were going to clean up and clean it all up and of course they didn't even come close. >> how hard the oil spread? >> before this oil from the exxon valdez that was documented was 12 or 1300 miles away. it went out of prince william sound and worked its way around and came up to the south end of inlet which is where anchorages, a completely different body of water and by see several hundred miles.

we talk about who had to come up with the response plan and i told you it was the primary responsibility on the spiller which is true but at the same time all the agencies that are often state that are in line to participate in a still have had their own response plans to see what they are going to do so everybody in prince william sound, every agency was erratically ready as a goal matter, none of them were but they were on the front line immediately, anybody who had a presence on prince william sound at the jump in immediately. the oil spill at a devastating impact on the fishing economy and other than people who work for the oil industry, fishing was the mainstay of the prince william sound economy outside valdez was fishing or nothing so they got salmon out of there, shrimp, herring, crab

and after the still the fisheries were just closed because it would have only taken one oil salmon to hit the market in seattle to just destroy the market for years to come so they shut it down and said no fishing. it was the first impact and later on it turned out those populations were damaged and herring was one big example and shrimp is another. so the fact that fishing had been shut down and everybody was going broke was an agonizing dilemma on the fisherman of prince william sound and then there was they hire their boats and crews to help them clean up? and there were some who wouldn't do it, they couldn't work for exxon. there were others who could and it provokes hideous division in prince william sound and there was a derisive term or people who work for exxon and they were

called spillionaires so the upshot of all this disruption was social dysfunction and that was one of the things that was studied by the group i work for, the prince william sound that is an's advisory council and there were increases in every form of family and social dysfunction you can imagine. there was more drinking, more suicide, or family violence. everything bad that can happen to a small one industry society happened to those people in prince william sound. >> how long did it take the cleanup until it was completed? >> the cleanup was intensive in the first year and it continued in the summer for another year or two and was

gets discontinued because there wasn't much left to do. even today there's some oil under some beaches in prince william sound, not a lot, just a few hundred hours but it is a testament to the persistence of the soil. at a cold climate or crew lease and once that oil gets below the surface it doesn't degrade very fast so that oil has not been consumed by nature . >> did congress ever get involved? >> congress did get involved. they passed, they did what congress does. they passed legislation and then at hearings and did investigations. the biggest legislative outcome was the oil pollution act of 1990. which remedied a lot of the perceived defects of lead. >> what were some of the key points in it that would affect oil? >> there were several. one is it required anchors be escorted by two tugs all the

way out of prince william sound and those two tugs were not only there to assist the tanker if it became disabled or not the blunder, they also have response equipment which in theory would be able to begin the response immediately if the tanker tarted leaking oil. if edit it had been possible to put aboomer around, it would have helped . the other big change which was fiercely advocated by people in prince william sound and indeed by all alaskans in general even before the oil craze started was to require double holes on oil tankers. a double hole is exactly what it sounds like. for double holes can have a bunch of oil in the tanker and an inch of steel or however pick the call is and then you'd have seawater so any puncture would result in an oil leak . with double holes on the side of the tankers, there are two

holes separated by a ballast, a seat of airspace or ballast water or inert gas or whatever they wanted so you could get a fairly serious puncture and have no leaks. it was estimated after the still that if the exxon valdez and had a double hole, it would have been dramatically reduced and i forget the exact number is on the order of 80 percentless . it would have made a tremendous difference so open 90 as people in the oil spill bureaucracies called it, the oil solution act of 1990 did require that ships coming into valdez and all american ports. oil had to havedouble holes by a certain deadline . now they all have double holes. >> does this oil spill affect the oil industry's influence in the alaska legislature and also did alaska impose any

regulations? >> alaska law was revised and regulations were revised to pay for some of the lessons of the spill. as far as the political climate goes, four years alaskans were sort of down on the oil industry but it's the biggest funding source for the government and i'm sure the biggest source to the legislature. a lot of people work in the oil industry, a lot of people know that the benefits you get from the state come from money, taxes from the oil industry. and we have in the state this thing called the alaskan summit fire which was made up entirely of part of the oil revenue and now stands at around $60 billion. the income from that fund is starting to pay for state governments because oil

revenues have declined as oil production has declined. one of the uses that it's been put to is something called the alaska permanent and dividend and once the state and every alaskan check, it varies in size, the lowest one was 1000, the highest was 2200. once every alaskan gets a check and we all know that it comesfrom oil money basically but now earnings from that fund the fund came from oil money . oil and oil industry just as been this tremendous mind share in alaska. it's definitely a love hate relationship. a lot of people hated the oil industry because of that and still do because of the way it controls our politics. butthe fact is you know, kind of like a bad marriage, it's not quite bad enough to get out of . >> relate this to the bp oil spill that happened off of the coast of louisiana. where there any similarities

and did they learn anything from what happened in alaska? >> there were no real parallels, two different circumstances. what was similar or alaskans watching from afar was the fact the oil industry was de facto and i'm sure they had all kinds of plans to keep that from happening on the oil rig and plans to deal with it when it did happen but did any of that work? that will spread and spread so then what was very familiar and to a considerable extent the same as it was is the impact on communities that lived along the coast of especially the fishing communities. so after that spill, a lot of people from that area came up here to look at what we had done in the prince william sound regional citizens advisory council and having a mechanism to give citizens a voice and how the oil

industry operates in these areas. the condo spill i think was much larger than the exxon valdez and as i recall the flow just went on or day after day and an inconceivable amount of time whereas the exxon valdez was a one and done event. >> do you think the oil industry has learned its lesson from the valdez and the oil spill off louisiana? >> yes and no. yes cause in the immediate aftermath they did respond. i made no judgment as to the sincerity of their response but if history is any guidance those lessons will be lost. the attention of the public will turn to other matters but the attention of the oil industry on the issue of getting lighter regulations never wanes. they will always be there and they will always be doing so i have a saying about

capitalism that is not quite as damning as it may sound. capitalism is amoral, it has no soul and no conscience. the soul of capitalism is to minimize costs and maximize revenue. it will always do that because that's in its dna . capitalism is a wonderful tool for increasing economic efficiency but it comes with a whole set of risks and we've seen the consequences in the gulf of mexico and prince william sound so what society must never do is forget that it's up to societies to set the rules under which capitalism operates because as i say, capitalism and of itself has no soul and no morality. it does what it has to and again, it's up to society to never let up because we do, we get my condo and the exxon valdez.

>> accurate alaska is the state's largest city located in the south control portion of the state it's known as the error crossroads of the world. with nearly 300,000 residents, the city contains 40 percent of alaska's total population. next we continueour look at alaska with a visit to the university of alaska to learn about the largest earthquake in american history . >> atvaldez , it's always a red letter day. >> or the men it means the first day of spring working cargoin the hold . for the women it brings fresh fruit and vegetables to valdez, the first they've seen since winter set in and for the kids it's always a little like christmas. a flock to the dock when the

ship comes in knowing the deckhand will greet them with candy and 5:36, a dozen miles deep under the mountains in prince william sound the hurt shivers and suddenly the harbor begins to empty. a chasm opens directly alongside the ship and start sinking down into it. soon only its mass can be seen from the top. the dock splinters, goes down with it. out in the gulf of alaska, the ocean bottom floods then he was upward a full 50 feet and waves start breaking ashore.

no one on the dock of the valdez survives. the longshoreman, the kids or their dogs. >> it happened at 5:30 6 pm and everybody knows that time on march 27 1964. it was decided that a lot of city offices were closed that the day because people were preparing meals and not out at work. it was the epicenter didn't prince william sound southeast of there. it was a little closer to the valdez in anchorage and it was 9.2 magnitude which was prettysubstantial . it's the largest that's ever happened on the north american continent and it's the second largest that has happened in the world so this was a test of services in what was a somewhat remote section of the united states so the federal government had

a crisis here certainly but this was a challenge in so many ways. these are some of the things we've seen today. the one on the table, the number of photographs all come from frank fox who was an air force pilot. he was flying around the city for the government and they were hitting photographs of the damage they could get a sense of scale of what was going on. a lot of these on the area, there was a fairly new subdivision that's now known as earthquake hollow and there's no houses there anymore because the dock kind of collapsed in waves on down the back and it destroyed a number of homes in this area. i believe there were a few fatalities also. as you might expect looking at this level of damage and the fact that a lot of people were at home when it happened . this is one of the better-known images is the jcpenney building which was fairly new. it became obviously a huge

amount of damage. there was at least one individual killed because of the collapse of the side panels on the building which were large panels. they had a crawlspace like we do today for an earthquake and it slid down. you see that port has been partially crushed by the flaps falling down. thatbuilding was a total loss . i believe they actually help the quake as far south as washington. i know they felt it in fairbanks which is a two hour drive straight north . i have been told there were some small effects felt in places like louisiana and mississippi that the water in small ponds could be seen to be moving so it was a substantial quake. there were people killed on the oregon and california coast because of the 08 that resulted. a social worker, she had

children's services but of course she was a social worker and because of her work in that role she did go out with the civil defense response though she kept a lot of those documents and one of the things she kept was this bulletin issued from the city of seward to the people of seward this is what you need to do. they're talking about the boiling water, what you need to do about the outpatient clinic, all water must be considered contaminated, of course all the water lines were taken out by this . add bleach to it to make it drinkable. you can't use the toilets so they set up honey bucket is the alaska term which means basically gasoline was in limited supply but there's also some concern about things like essential disease in a quake like this about not having potable water and

not having toilets that flush or a working sewer system, you have to be worried about disease so there's one requirement that shops will begin on monday outpatient clinics 9 am untilthe , you must get yours no matterwhen you have your last shot . i find it an interesting phrase. this one was written by edith lindsay to her daughter in bellingham. she wrote monday evening after the earthquake, she wrote it monday evening and the daughter labeled this before it was sent that they had no electricity.they were living in downtown anchorage at an apartment buildingoverlooking ship creek . she says we are still getting along fine, so much better than many. i still out on the same clothes i had on on friday morning. i sleep in my wool socks, long underwear and djs, but

not me. they were still having aftershocks at that point and if you wanted to get out of your apartment building in a hurry you probably, that would be common for a lot of people. it's interesting, for such a widespread and traumatic event is still very much a localstory . anchorage, sections of anchorage, certain people who lived in turn again might have had a different response people live on the outside because they would have been expected as badly so valdez is very much a valdez story. changed the nature of the town. there's so many projects on gathering information from survivors and theirexperience . some of that was done to find out what we would do in the future something and there were psychological studies done of the people involved but it really is a local thing.

people in seward, there quake. people in anchorage, there quake so because they were all fighting different things. seward all entirely lost economy over this. anchorage still function. now these which was largely fishing at the time, a lot of the boats were far inland to the soon on the ways plus the port facility was damaged so badly so there's too many factors to say this is the alaska response even though affected much of alaska. there's actually a huge facebook group of people who lived through the earthquake. it was created at least shortly before the 50th anniversary which was a few years back but they are incredibly active even now and people are constantly sharing their memories and photographs. be periodically get a call from somebody says they have materials from this or i have my photos.

so there's, it's the regular topic of conversation and part of that is because fairly seismic reactive place, we're hopefully not one that we would make any sense in. >> it was so life-changing event, it really is one of those lifetime events where it's where were you when and if somebody was through it, they could tell you every bit of it. it's permanently ingrained in their memory. >>. >> the 20 source of this mark the 113th annual midnight sun game in fairbanks alaska. amateur baseball game held hold all the gold pan or start around 10:30 p.m. and because the sun is out for nearly 24 hours, there's no need for additional lighting. next we continue our special look at alaska as we see with mary shields, the first person to complete the

iditarod and the author of sled dog trails. >>. >> what was the first time you cross that line? >> it was unique. i've been traveling for 20 days. out in the cold. and then it was melancholy too because i was living and traveling and i didn't want to come to an endbut i didn't want to come to an end and it was quite an exciting finish . we went down on a sheet made of snow fence in nolan hundreds of people came out at 3:00 in themorning and we were chaining the dogs in and i could see something at the

finish line, i couldn't tell what is . sometimes our lassies get stuck together. we had about a warm mitten but i wasn't going to do that the last mile of the race so i kept going until i could tell what was waiting for me at the finish line and it was a group of women from no. they had a banner they were waiting or was any over them or something and the manner said since 1974, the letter said you've come a long way, baby.very nice welcome after 1000 miles on the trail at all that interested in dogsledding or what is your interest in dogsledding? >> i came to alaska to work teaching swimming lessons out in the villages . but we were out in the summer so i didn't see any dog teams. i saw the dogs tiedup but i didn't think those were sled dogs . and then after the end of the summer, i decided i want to

make my home here in alaska. i have swimsuits and these to get around if i wanted to go exploring in the middle of october some friends of mine came down on the train and my mail came on the train. i nailed the engineer onto the tracks so this day was really tooting the whistle and that train came to a shop stop and low and behold was my old friend michael sally come down to see if i was still alive. sometimes people go on these adventures and nobody ever sees them again and i was candidate, i was a brownie drop and i knew nothing about living out in the woods. the woman whoworked on archaeology gave , when their driver was there for two years, they ask if he could stay there and learn to live the way those people there and they were welcomed and they learn how to preserve berries and smoked salmon and they had to go on a moose on and which are moose and learn

to drive the dog team. my cabin they saw me during the day bringing in the pails of water and mike said what you need is a few sled dogs and it so happened they had some dogs at home they were using anymore so they went down to survey. again, the engineer is just wailing on the whistle. train come through a fewstops and i'll come to a little black dog and then a big red fluffy dog . >> and an old gray dogsled and a mountain of checkerboard packages and to dog harnesses and then they all need instructions that came with this beginners kit taped on the back of battle dogsled and every guy needs to know in two sentences, see mary, there'snothing to it . he says just the dogs in some of the sleds and that's really all there is to it. you take the dog for the sled and i harnesses out, i don't know if they're on right but

i kinda dogs decided the sled and they got dogsled. so i pulled one off, the two would start fighting hold this one off and went on and on. i was screaming andfinally i kept all the dogs and they ran down the trail .i need matrix driving all those dogs home but that's when i got my first dogs . >> how did you train them to use the sled? >> they knewmore than i did about dogsledding . >> i just kind of didn't make sense. i worked for the lead for the first week and then added one of the rent dogs and finally had to put all three together and they went in the same direction and i just gave them little treats when they did the right thing. >> wended the idea of raising come in? >> i met my future husband to be when we went on a camping trip and that was in 1970, i

think. it was lovely but in november the days were getting darker and colder and shorter so for the next 20 as we went on a month-long camping trip in the month of march when it's getting brighter and warmer and sunnier and i just loved it but one time we went to 10 to visit a friend christmastime and december is not a good time to travel because it's dark and cold and we had a snowshoe quite a bit of the way and it was the afternoon of christmas day, when we came home we were back on snow suits in front of the dogs and when i got home i started hearing rumors about this iditarod race so it was the chance to see 1000 miles of alaska and not have to break trail so i was caught up there in the committee and said i'dlike to join your race . i told mary and they said how

many dogs do you have? i said you've got to have eight. okay, you're in the race. now you have to complete a 200 mile qualifying race to get in the race because some years they have over 100 teams and if or six not in trouble, you have to hire the rest of them so i was lucky to get in on an early year. two of the teams who were women, i just had a wonderful experience . >> to get a little bit of background i guess on the iditarod race, how long is it and what does it consist? >> it's 1049 miles per year all the way up to know alaska to the center of the state of alaska and in 1925, gnome had a diphtheria epidemic and they saved many lives will be

iditarod race celebrate that event when dogs came to the rescue of people. and it was to the alaska range, goes to the mountains and on the yukon river goes along the ocean, travels in all different kinds of terrain and places. now the tour is part of a historic system and it's quite well marked. you might see a marker on a tree and you don't see anything for a couple of miles now well marked and there's a bicycle race on it, i didn't like and they have a junior iditarod so it's quite well used. >> before you and your friend decided to compete in the race was there ever a history of women competing in the iditarod? >> that was the second year they had the first year they are trying to see if the trail was connected. i don't think there were too many of them. >> you know what was the reaction to you and your friend signing up?

>> i don't know when we signed up but i know when i pulled into a checkpoint, sometimes the men that were there when they took all going in the checker that was taking care and they said that's interesting, they were going to spend the night there. i have the feeling you want to be seen traveling west because they didn't want to be you know, but >> can we talk about your first day and i guess the first overnight of the iditarod? were you nervous at all? >> i was very nervous because we were traveling around the ocean. i didn't know where i was, was dark at night and i was a little wondering whether this was such a good idea and everyone else was faster than i was. i was being told the time because i only had eight dogs and there was a little nervousness checkpoint.

and then i made this checkpoint and i needed to the second one and i broke it down into little the mile segments. i did 50 miles in another 50 miles and then as the scale went on more and more comfortable and really enjoyed it. >> you have the dogsledding aspect, what about setting up camp? are you camping? >> no race, your campaign, you're trying to get to the finish line faster than all those other teams so we find the dogs are happiest and without the best performance you on the race on the same routine we've been training on and most people would on one or 2000 miles in training for the race begins. you can't ask a dog to do this unless you train them properly and gotten their muscles . so they can do that. so we wanted or five hours depending on the trail

conditions and then before the dogs want to stop, you pull over and stop and you rest people in our time, or five hours and then the dogs were also hundred percent. the must, i would love to recuperate 100 percent doing the chores . the dogs are sleeping so it's a different thing. you don't have time to make a campfire melt snow and make their food. at the: cooler you take onit, it's not warm anymore but it's not frozen . you feed the dogs and then they can doll it up and go to sleep at one of their resting. you don't want them to take off with a belly full food because they regurgitate it you like to see meals come down the trail for the mushrooms but there is anything like meals on speed. you said that your food and then it's this doctor's of my money and she's , these real meals you've got and

then you frozen and on the trail all you have to do is follow and warm it up and he pieces as you can imagine is very popular. their high content out there in the cold day and night and you can leave it up near your campfire and have a hot meal in no time . he burritos for 1000 miles and he had a distinct looking side, he put five or six readers inside his parka and then made fish around until they found a burrito clearing out as he went down the scale on one occasion he had lost burrito or four days and it ended up in a couple of snowpacks, i'm sure he never ate anotherburrito as long as he lived .>>. >> you're making a fire and melting snow, wrapping up the meat and fishputting cooler for the next stop . then you have your chores

done, you get a rest yourself butyou don't pick your tent, you're not going to get comfortable . >> you have allowed for all alarm on your wristwatch and you might just get this and later your alarm goes off, you got to go out and get off . >> how long did it take you to complete? >> it took me 28 days which is very long area the average time i believe is a days, so a lot has changed. >>. >>. >> i had physical problems the last two years and i've had my leg amputated so i haven't been on the sled for two years but i tend to be on it again this coming winter and i will race i like to go on camping trips and get out to see where my neighborsare, see the tracks . i just have five dogs and i wanted to make it to60, that seem like the least .

from alexis viewpoint and now i'm 73 so i don't need a number of dogs i have five of the sweetest dogs in all of alaska, they're very nice dogs. >> what would your advice fee to anyone who's watching who wants to join the iditarod or compete? >> if you're not a dog mustard to begin with i volunteered to work out on the trail, we one of the checkers at the checkpoints or at the finish and then run dogs for a couple years, take care of yourself and then sign up for the race. don't rush it because you'll get yourself in serious trouble if you go out before you knowwhat to do ? >> unit c alaska, located in the state panhandle population of over 30,000

area the most remote capital city in the country. there are no roads connecting juneau to the rest of the state. despite this, it's a popular destination for cruise ships and tourists coming to ride the trail and it is not roberts grip glacier. we continue our special look at alaska as author earnestine hayes talksabout her but on indian and alaskan native memoirs . >> i was born in juneau at the edge of the juneau indian village at the end of the second world war. my mother was full wanted the eagle side of the call the one-time plan of the area and i never knew my father i don't know what nationality he was. but luckily, the nation follows matrilineal progression and so i belonged

to the same plan and nation my mother belonged to so when i was a girl , really growing up in the village my grandmother taught me songs and she, when i was young i had long hair. when i was very small i had long hair and she told me long indian taught me a little song and a little dance and she would dance with me while i sang that song. during the time when i was growing up, juneau was obviously in the fourth a lot smaller than it is now.i think we had one stoplight that only blinks, didn't really intend to stop any cars and there were many cars anyway. it was one bus and my aunt berman and uncle george lived very close to where we are now and sometimes there be a loss to douglas but we always want. and juneau was quite a bit

different. it was still a territory and we were under territorial laws. and it was recently colonized so there was still repercussions of colonization. sometimes the effects of colonization are of course there's a good deal of discrimination. there's a good deal of oppression the taking. of people who inhabited this land for 10,000 years or more. they had intricate bonds whereby certain parts of the land to be used by 30 plans and a sophisticated legal system and of course all those were done away with new laws, new schools, which, knew everything came into alaska because of gold

and timber and fish. we had a property in the juneau indian village that was the result of a town site project that the new people brought in and juneau is not a traditional permanent village. the permanent village is further out by the glacier and juneau was not a permanent village but it became a village when the town started growing so when they established the town site for the juneau indian village they parceled out certain parts and my family still owns one of the restricted lands properties, very small but it's big enough to put a family house on and that was our economic status. my grandmother lives in

cannery during summer and my grandfather fish and my uncle fish my uncle did similar work of course. i didn't know my father and it was 1945 when i was born and in those days in any place in the united states, that was very difficult and a lot of issues raised. and i wasn't particularly included in many of the native functions during those times. my grandmother and mother were not, they didn't participate as much in native functions. when i was very small my grandmother would take me two different parties, they called them and some people called them potlaches but my

mother was sort of ostracized so she would not participate in many of the native functions and of course i wasn't welcome in most of the white functions so i skipped a lot of barriers. >> i have to say i was in unsupervised wild child and to the degree that when i was 15 years old, my mother had had enough and she moved up to california while i stayed for 25 long years and never came home. when we moved to california my mother took the soonest opportunity to go off on her own. she ended up moving to washington dc and staying on the east coast for several years while it had been my lifelong practice to cling to the west coast and she kept in touch.

but she had said she would never go back to alaska, never. because of the difficulty she had had and that was one of the very serious considerations that i had to spend a lot of time thinking about when i decided to come back home. >> when i turned 40, my life was in shambles. i was broke, my children were growing or living with their father . i was penniless and i have been trying to come back home for a few years and i just turned 40 and said let me go home or let me die with my boots facing north and eight months to get from san francisco to ketchikan living in my car, standing in food lines, living in shelters and when i do they are i camped out. and then i found a job, found

a place to stay. except for my mother and said two years later i made it all the way back home and when i came back home, i wasn't sure what to expect as far as whether people would remember us but the mountains were still the same, the eagles were still the same, the place was still the same and the people and culture remembered us and accepted us and welcomed us back home. we were walking downtown on front street somebody from across the street yelled daisy, daisy. and remember her and from that day on, she was because the home. >> to have all these generations as my family back here in juneau, my grandchildren live here. my children live here and my great-grandchildren live here. it means more to me than i could ever say area my mother

lived the last few years of her life in juneau and so she left to our own family plot in evergreen cemetery. i don't believe that she would be, i don't believe that she would be, she would find rest anywhere else. >> denali national park is a 6 million acre preserve located in interior alaska. home to denali, also known as mount mckinley which had 20,310 feet is north america's highest. next we continue our special look alaska by learning about the history of her farms in thestate . >> for farms in alaska very from being very prominent to being barely noticeable over the two centuries that they are ready. when the russians first brought boxes to the

allocation islands, it was a very big industry for the russians and then the americans took over. it was the third largest industry behind gold-mining and salmon fishing. and it was important enough that the governor hired a veterinarian to do, take care of the firm. the veterinary was the only veterinarian in the territory except the one other who had quit through for farming. the push started in 1749. it was a very small start, a russian captain of the ship who was coming to hunt for seals and sea otters stop the commander islands as the ships often did for the winter before trying to make

the crossing to the islands and he picked up in literal boxes. these were very special boxes because they were all boxes that did not translate in winter. they remained dark, they were called luvox's and a sense those boxes were trapped in the winter because the coat was so freakish and because dark spurs were very popular in moscow and even more importantly, in china which was the big buyer of forests, he picked up this special letter, brought in, talked to the alley about not filling the handles and feeding them somewhat in the winter. he stayed there for two years and said now i'm going to

come back and travel these boxes and i will bring you trade goods. the actual island is at the tip of the allegations and if you look do you see the allegations make this sweeping her and if you follow it with your eyesit goes to the islands . and that was the route that the russians were taking to this new land with all these rich earth. they had already exterminated almost the islands and they would soon exterminate the boxes and or almost on the commander islands as well but the time of the purchase of alaska which was 1867, the russians had quite a number of funds going. the largest one was on the person islands in the americans took it over but

very early farmers both in evaluation and american., most of those were using islands as their fences. >> foxes do not like to swim. so most of them were while running foxes meaning they fed on food that was put out and then it became more sophisticated, they built track houses that where they fed foxes and had a little door open when a fox walked over it and working time they unlock that door and started the foxes but as they became more possible, there were all kinds of animals being raised and in cages. and on the mainland. martin and meek and earnings and stumps and raccoons.

and mostly in people's houses. so what looked like was greatly varied over the few centuries. this goes back to genesis and they were very important in the north, china is cold, russia is cold ., coats, linings and the same time there was a parallel marker the elegant women. those palaces in russia were not heated and you have a for lighting for your dress or your bodies is wonderful for its look and for its warmth. >> ..

there were more than 600. the population of the territory at that time was 60,000. so there were 60,000 people and more than 600 farms. things that really changed farming of course was a market. and during world war ii, synthetic worn materials were developed by the americans. the germans were still using fur but at the end of that time suddenly you could get warm clothes without fur. so the synthetic market have began back, and then people who were offended by the idea of of killing foxes and someone say, we don't need this at all because we no longer need it for warmth. that helped pita get started in the protest against that.

but fashion changed after the war. a lot of people moved to california, didn't need it, a fur code. it was a big question movement. the new rising, people who rose on the tide after the war were buying washing machines and cars. they were not interested in getting fancy fur. it was the market that really did in the industry. the last fur farm i believe close to 1993. alaska has lot of boom and bust industries, including fur farming as a people went on to something else. after the war there was a lot of construction. we had a huge construction boom. at that time gold-mining was also declining but something you and then of course oil came. people were pretty flexible

about moving on to something else. i think there's some misunderstanding about fur farms and their cruelty. at least on the islands. so it was not an industry of cruelty and -- but it was one where everyone was a little bit ignorant about the consequences, the unintended consequences. >> twice a a month c-span citis tours take booktv and american history tv on the road to explore the literary life and history of the selected city. working with our cable partners we visit various literary and historic sites as we interview local historians, office and civic leaders. you can watch any of our past interviews and tours online by going to booktv.org and selecting c-span cities tour from the series dropped out at the top of the page. or by visiting c-span.org/cities

tour. you can follow the c-span cities tour on twitter. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable-television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> next on booktv's "after words," amanda carpenter a former senior staffer for republican senators ted cruz and jim demint provides a critical analysis of president trump's political messaging pixies