The U.S. Army now moved rapidly to spearhead the construction of the Alaska Highway. A scant twenty-six days had passed between Secretary Ickes’s first suggestion to review the various road plans and FDR’s decision to build it. It just goes to show how quickly things could happen given the exigencies of war. Initial operational plans called for four 1,300-man army engineer regiments, each augmented by a light pontoon company to effect river crossings, to scratch out some semblance of a road along the entire 1,500-mile route—what came to be known as the pioneer trail.
