The Town Where Almost Everyone Lives in One Building

Full script: the history of Whittier, Alaska

Whittier sits at the head of a narrow inlet off Prince William Sound, about fifty-eight miles from Anchorage. It is one of the wettest towns in America, with nearly two hundred inches of rain and snow a year.

The Chugach people once used this pass as a portage route. A nearby glacier was named in 1915 for the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, and the town later took the name too.

During World War Two, the Army built a secret port here, with a railroad spur finished in 1943. It became the doorway for American soldiers coming into Alaska.

After the war, the Army built two giant buildings. The Buckner Building, finished in 1953, was called the city under one roof. Four years later came the fourteen-story Hodge Building, today called Begich Towers.

Begich Towers had a tunnel at its base, so children could walk to school without going outside in the storms.

The Army left in 1960. In 1964, the Good Friday earthquake, the largest ever recorded in the United States, sent a tsunami into Whittier. Thirteen people were killed.

For decades the only ways in were by train, boat or plane. Then in 2000, the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel opened to cars, the first road ever to connect Whittier to the rest of Alaska.

The Buckner Building now stands abandoned. But Begich Towers is still home to most of Whittier's two hundred and seventy people, a whole town living under one roof.