NY Army Guard engineers build wilderness road in Alaska

CORDOVA, Alaska --Twenty-one Soldiers from the New York Army National Guard's 204th Engineer Battalion spent two weeks in June building a road in Alaska, as part of an Innovative Readiness Training mission.

From June 10 to June 26, the members of the battalion's Quarry Platoon, who are based in Binghamton, New York, helped build a kilometer of road that will eventually stretch eight kilometers, or 5 miles, near the Cordova, Alaska. The road, including three bridges, will link a unique oil spill response base being built on Prince William Sound to the airport in Cordova.

Construction on the Shepard Point Tribal Transportation Oil Spill Response and Marine Casualty Facility began in 2023.

Prince William Sound was the location of the 1989 Exon Valdez disaster, during which 11 million gallons of oil-contaminated over 1,300 square miles of coastline. The Shephard Point spill response center, which includes a deep-water dock, is the last of three centers being built to deal with any future marine disaster.

However, the port needs to be linked to the airport. Army engineer units from across the country, including New York, are building the road.

The Department of Defense Innovative Readiness Training program matches military units with civilian communities where they can help residents and hone their military skills simultaneously.

These range from medical units working at local clinics to, in this case, engineer units building a road.

Steep mountainous terrain along the Prince William Sound separates the City of Cordova from the Sheppard Point site, making watercraft the only means of transportation between the two locations, according to 1st Lt. Madison Chase, the Quarry Platoon's leader.

The quarry platoon's mission is usually just what the names says, according to Chase, the platoon leader. They blast and crush rock for use in road building.

Those skills were all used during the mission, Chase said.

Quarry Soldiers assisted in performing rock crushing with an on-site mobile rock crushing unit. Quarry Soldiers also assisted civilian demolitions experts with the emplacement of explosives used to transform steep mountainsides into leveled areas, he said.

This provided a great training opportunity, he added. The civilians conducting the blasting used explosives to both shape the terrain for continued construction and create shot rock which would be utilized for road construction.

This gave his Soldiers a better understanding of how their demolition skills can be applied to road building projects, Chase explained.

They also got a chance to work as horizontal engineers alongside civilian crews, he said.

His Soldiers learned a lot working alongside civilian engineers who specialize in work in these environments, Chase added.

The quarry platoon Soldiers "pioneered" through the Alaskan rainforest to construct access roads which will be used by other engineering units to move equipment forward and clear the way for more construction.

Additionally, the New York Soldiers moved several hundred cubic meters of mud out of the to reach bedrock for the emplacement of a bridge abutment, Chase said.

During this training, the platoon's heavy equipment operators trained on dozers, hydraulic excavators, dump trucks, rollers, and skid steers. Frequently this earth moving equipment was operated in tight quarters near steep drop-offs along the Alaskan coast, Chase said.

The road project is being overseen by the Alaska Army National Guard and is due to be finished in three years, Chase said.

"This was a great opportunity for junior Soldiers and experienced Sergeants alike to get hands-on experience operating equipment and overseeing construction in an austere environment," Chase said.

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