Red lines show proposed alignments A & B, that Dan and I mapped and evaluated in November, 1985. The Pioneer Road in 2018 ended up branching off from a point farther north on the Highway, climbing higher onto the slopes before traversing down to Middle Point.
Twenty-seven crossings of Ḵaalahéenak’u
North Douglas Highway’s irritating dead-end has always seemed an affront to public-spirited builders. According to Dan Bishop’s report, planners have wanted to open up western Sayéik, spirit helper (Douglas Island) since even before pavement reached that lonely dead end in 1974. In fact, a never-built ‘ghost’ road still runs right along the beach to Middle Point on USGS topographic maps.
Finally, in 2018, stars aligned, and the ambitious Pioneer Road branched off, from just short of road’s-end, thrusting all the way southeast to Middle Point—albeit terminating 0.4 miles inland from saltwater.
So this recent road extension took 44 years, bucking opposition from residents, agencies and NGOs who value coho, giant trees, and venison you don’t need a plane or skiff to gather. We still don’t know the ultimate fate of this lovely network of salmon tribs, alluvial fans, and pocket peatlands on Ḵaalahéenak’u, inside a person’s mouth (Peterson Creek). But roads are rarely recalled.
Our 1985 report details an earlier effort to open up back-Sayéik. I’ve reformatted it for digital distribution, adding only a cover-page preface and one little vignette from our now-historical map, overlaid onto modern LiDAR topography and stream-lines, to see how well we did. Pretty impressive, actually, for those compass-&-hipchain ‘dark ages’ before GPS and drones.
