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Dry-docked boats and a reindeer pen sit in front of Begich Towers’
main entrance. |
The City of
Whittier, Alaska was incorporated in 1969. About 200 people live there and work with the Alaska State Ferry, the Alaska Railroad, freight barge, commercial fishing, the Whittier Harbor, recreation and tourism. About 700,000 wilderness tourists visit there each year. Almost all of the permanent residents live in a 14-story former Army barracks built in 1956. The building, called Begich Towers, holds a police station, a health clinic, a church, and a laundromat. The children commute to school through a tunnel. The only way to get to Whittier by land is to drive through a two-and-a-half-mile, one-lane railroad tunnel that shuts down at night.
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Gary Carr works at the Kozy Korner Store, one of Whittier’s
two grocery stores. |
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| Because the winters are so ferocious, the town’s only playground is indoors. |
I can't imagine what it would be like to live in such a small contained community.
More:
The California Sunday Magazine
Via
Wow! I can't imagine it either, although it slightly reminds me of the way I've felt when I lived in a city: as if I had to stay indoors if I wanted any solitude or privacy. As if I was a prisoner indoors, sort of.
ReplyDeleteHighrises make me claustrophobic. I think living there would be like living in an institution.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to think twice before pissing people off.
ReplyDeleteI took the ferry from Valdez to Whittier thinking I could hop over to the Seward Highway down to Homer. Minor panic when I found out you couldn’t drive out as the tunnel wasn’t open to cars until 2000. But they made it easy, special ramps let you drive on to a railroad flatcar then car to car until the train was full. Through that 2.5 mile tunnel and across the wetlands 12 miles to portage.