The Alaska Road Builder

By Erik Johnson, Denali Historian

A Man Worthy of a Bridge? Angelo Ghiglione

Richardson. Steese. Elliott. Taylor. If you travel around the Alaska road system, these names might look familiar. They were former presidents of the Alaska Road Commission (ARC) with highways now named in their honor. ARC was an agency established in 1905, under the War Department, with a mission to build roads in the vast—almost completely road-less—Alaska territory.[1] The final president of the ARC did not get a highway, but he did get a landmark along the Denali Park Road.

Mount McKinley National Park Superintendent's Monthly Reports mention the "Ghiglione Creek Bridge" while it was being planned in the late 1950s, even though "Ghiglione Creek" was never an official name for the creek that the bridge spans.[2] Published Alaska Territory Reports from the late 1950s also reference the name "Ghiglione Creek," which was likely named after Angelo Ghiglione—the ARC engineer and final ARC president before the agency was overtaken by the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) in 1956.[3] The Ghiglione Bridge was completed in 1960.

Angelo Ghiglione performed inspections of the Park Road beginning in the 1930s and 1940s while he was an engineer for ARC.[4] He resided near McKinley Park Station with his wife, Alice, for at least part of the late 1930s, and the Fairbanks Daily News Miner reported that the couple spent their honeymoon in the park in 1939.[5] Ghiglione was named president of the ARC in 1951 and served in that role until 1956.

After spending nearly 25 years involved with road building in Alaska, Ghiglione went on to have a distinguished career working for the U.S. Bureau of Roads' Foreign Projects Division and then as the deputy director of operations in the U.S. Department of Transportation. He won top engineer awards from the National Society of Professional Engineers and the Washington Council of Architects and Engineers. Following retirement, he and Alice moved to Seattle, Washington, where he spent his final years before passing away in 1996.

We've Been Saying It All Wrong

According to longtime Healy resident Patsy Nordmark, who grew up in Juneau and was a neighbor of the Ghiglione family during her childhood, the name is pronounced GIL-LEE-OH-NEE. Four syllables and the second "g" is silent.[6]

[1] The ARC was originally known as the Board of Road Commissioners of Alaska when it formed in 1905. It changed its name to the Alaska Road Commission in 1926 and was subsumed by the Department of Interior in 1932. The War Department was the precursor to the Department of Defense, which was created in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

[2] Superintendent's Monthly Report, Mount McKinley National Park, July 1958.

[3] U.S. Deptartment of the Interior, 1957 Annual Report, Governor of Alaska to the Secretary of the Interior, For the Fiscal Year Ended June 1957 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1957), 99; BPR was overtaken by the Alaska State Highway Department (ASHD) after Alaska statehood in 1959; soon after, ASHD became Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (commonly referred to as ADOT today).

[4] SMR, September 1947.

[5] "Park Road Chief to Wed Teacher," Fairbanks Daily News Miner, June 6, 1939.

[6] Patsy Nordmark Interview, June 13, 2017, DENA Cultural Files.

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