By Hank Nuwer
Alaskans and Alaskan visitors by automobile evermore owe a debt to General Wilds Preston Richardson for building the roads more traveled.
A native Texan, he was born March 20, 1861, three weeks before Confederate troops fired the first shot of the Civil War in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor.
Early on he desired a military career and graduated from West Point in the Class of 1884. His early career included stints as an aide-de-camp to a brigadier general, an instructor of military tactics at his alma mater, and then, on August 14, 1897, then-First Lieutenant Richardson landed in Alaska on a military assignment at St. Michael in the Yukon.
In short order, he accepted various service assignments in Alaska as adjutant of the department of Alaska, the chief supervisor of Army posts, and head of the Alaska Road Commission. He was promoted to the rank of captain in 1899.
(A future column will explore Richardson’s role in the boundary dispute with the USA and Canada in 1901-02.).
Captain Richardson next oversaw the completion of Fort William H. Seward in 1904, the last of the Gold Rush military outposts, and now a National Historic Landmark site at the top of a travel bucket list for wife Gosia and me.
My frequent visits to the awesome Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in Fairbanks educated me on what passed for roads in Alaska then. They were treacherous mere trails, laden with nasty obstacles, bog-holes, deep ruts, and fallen trees in need of clearing.
Eventually promoted to Colonel, Richardson assumed command of the Alaska Road Commission under a federal agency then termed the War Department. He above all others was responsible for opening roads that opened up Alaska’s Interior with new bridges, summit pathways, and weather-defeating road beds.
In Cordova in 1912, the clearest, loudest voice demanding federal appropriations belonged to Richard J. Barry, secretary of the Cordova Chamber of Commerce. He maintained that good roads would bring citizens better produce, cheaper household goods due to lesser hauling rates, and timely delivery of mail in a letter to the (Fairbanks) Weekly Alaska Citizen on April 8, 1912.
Richardson left the chair of the Road Commission to accept a promotion in rank to brigadier general around the time the U.S. entered World War One on April 6, 1917. Richardson had always been a husky man, but by this time his bulk was formidable. He complained that he had to fork over one month’s pay to have a custom saddle built to accommodate his broad beam. Army regulation saddles were useless for him. He also required an extra sturdy steed.
Flash forward to the lobbying efforts of U.S. House of Representatives Delegate and mining magnate Charles A. Sulzer (with Richardson always having his back) that finally persuaded the House in 1918, after several failed attempts, to pass a military appropriations bill that included $100,000 for Alaska roads, according to the Cordova Daily Times of June 25, 1918.
Unfortunately, less than one year later, Sulzer took ill before he could see his dream of better roads fulfilled. He took ill at age 40 and died on a boat intending to take him to the hospital in Ketchikan.
The Cordova Daily Times of April 18, 1919, printed a eulogy to him.
“The death of Charles A. Sulzer comes as a personal sorrow to every resident of Alaska. Even his political enemies are moved to expressions of grief and of sympathy with his sorrowing family. A man in the prime of life, he had shown himself to be a true Alaskan meeting every emergency with the spirit of the true pioneer.”
World War One did not mean an end of fighting for Army troops. Washington’s leaders decided to intervene in a foreign civil war in northern Russia with well-armed Bolshevik troops.
Czar Nicholas II, a poor leader by all historic accounts, abdicated in March 1917 as various rebel groups condemned his decision to declare war on Germany in World War One (and many other complaints lodged by his subjects).
The Bolshevik Party under leader Vladimir Lenin had seized power from the provisional Russian government in November 1917. On the night of July 17, 1918, the world was shocked by reports that 50-year-old Nicholas II, his wife, five children, and attendants were shot and bayoneted by the Bolshevik, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
The decision to take on the Bolsheviks on their own soil was well-intentioned, but historians ever after called the invasion “ill-advised.”
Briefly, Washington decided to construct the American Expeditionary Forces-North Russia (the name subsequently slightly changed and expanded). The argument then was that the United Staes was needed as the world’s police officer to make the world safe for democracy.
U.S. and Allied units sailed to Russia and clashed with Bolshevik forces from Archangel in North Russia to Vladivostok.
General Richardson’s vast experience in winter conditions persuaded General John J. Pershing to tap him as the commander of American troops at Murmansk, Russia. He left the U.S. on April 14, 1919. His first task was to quell a mutiny by American troops two weeks before his arrival and to use his leadership skills to restore morale. The dissidents had enough of -20 and -30 temperatures.
Before his arrival in Siberia, Allied forces and loyal Russian forces clashed at the battle of Uros Ozero on April 11, 1919. Newspaper accounts say the Bolsheviks suffered 46 killed, nine wounded, and 26 taken prisoner.
One soldier from Canada died in the fighting for the Allies.
(Fortunately for the maternal side of my family, my Polish-speaking grandfather and his brother, taken as conscripts from Warsaw into the Czar’s military service), had a decade previously deserted after three years with an artillery division and sailed to America).
By August 1, 1919, General Pershing notified the War Department he had ordered General Richardson and his staff to leave Russia. A few troops remained to help transport the American dead back home.
On November 13, 1919, the bodies of 114 servicemen were unloaded with ceremony at a pier in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Richardson received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1922, The citation read: “For exceptional meritorious and distinguished service as commanding general of the American Expeditionary Force in North Russia.”
Late in life, Richardson’s heart was with Alaska, although he lived in Washington, D.C. In an article for the Atlantic magazine in 1928, he made a case for territorial home rule and urged the development of the territory for tourists and sporting visitors.
General “Dick” Richardson died in Washington, D.C. in 1929.
The Juneau Daily Alaska Empire published a eulogy, saying “There are probably more people in Alaska who would say that General Richardson leads all persons in the value of his services in the Territory, than would say that of any other person, living or dead.”
The Richardson Highway, Alaska’s oldest highway named in his honor, improved from a wagon road to serving automobile traffic in the 1920s. A U.S. troopship was named for Richardson in 1944.