Anchorage Depot

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the thousands of people who had come to find gold in Alaska were calling for a railroad to link the Yukon River with a year-round open port. They wanted an All-American route and lower transportation costs. Such a route became a reality in 1923 when the federal government completed the construction of the Alaska Railroad that linked Seward on the North Pacific Ocean, and Fairbanks, the largest city in interior Alaska, 470 miles north. The railroad established its administrative headquarters at Anchorage in 1917.

The 1920s and early 1930s were slow times for the Alaskan economy and for the railroad which required federal subsidies. The population of Anchorage cheered the news in 1936 that the federal government would partly fund a new City Hall, and that a new federal building was planned in 1938. These projects replaced wood frame buildings with reinforced concrete buildings. An additional sign of progress was when the just paved Fourth Avenue, the main commercial artery, got streetlights and stoplights in 1939. The infusion of money for federal projects made one local newspaper enthuse that "Uncle Sam Was Here to Stay.

Another important new concrete building in Anchorage was the Alaska Railroad depot. The railroad contracted with the J.B. Warrack Company of Seattle for a new depot and office building on August 8, 1941. The $261,000 project was completed on September 15, 1942, and replaced a wood shiplap building used for over twenty years.

World War II boosted the economies of Anchorage and the railroad. The Army Air Force built Elmendorf Field in 1940 and available jobs brought many people to the area. The town's population grew from four thousand in 1940 to an estimated six thousand in 1942. The railroad increased its net income from $341,663 in 1940, when it hauled 194,467 tons of freight, to $5, 242,942 in 1944, when it hauled 627,847 tons.