Nothing altered the face of Alaska more than the Second World War. One may argue that the arrival of the Excelsior in San Francisco in July 1897 unleashed the Klondike stampede, and that Atlantic Richfield’s announcement of oil and gas discoveries at Prudhoe Bay in June 1968 opened the floodgates of another. But the buildup of population, transportation networks, and concomitant infrastructure—all of which remained and was infused with returning GIs at war’s end—made December 7, 1941, and the period that followed, the most pivotal in Alaska’s history.
