Catch for Ketchikan

On a ragged finger of coastline, stretching about 350 miles along the panhandle of Alaska, stands the Tongass National Forest, biggest expanse of virgin timberland in North America. Last week, at the foot of a tree-grown hill six miles from Ketchikan (pop. 8,000), a group of U.S. businessmen dedicated a $52.5 million pulp mill, the first to use the vast resources of the forest.

The mill is the biggest industrial investment ever made by private capital in Alaska and the only major year-round industry in the territory. Built by the American Viscose Corp. and the Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co., it will turn out more than 500 tons of high-grade pulp a day, to be used by American Viscose in making Cellophane and rayon. Almost completely automatic, it will employ about 1,000 people in office and logging work, but will require only 50 men per shift to run the plant. Since the plant was put up, the town of Ketchikan has started a $15 million civic-improvement program, including $4,000,000 for roads, $2,700.000 for a high school, and a $3,250,000 bond issue for a hydroelectric plant and dial phone system.

Taking Up Slack. Other big timber developments are also on the way. In Juneau the Georgia Pacific Plywood Co. wants to build a $75 million newsprint pulp mill, has asked to lease enough forest lands to supply it. Pacific Northern Timber Co. plans to start work next month on a $20 million sawmill and pulp-mill development in Wrangell. In Sitka the Alaska Lumber & Pulp Co., subsidiary of a Japanese firm, has asked permission to cut enough national forest timber to supply a $30 million to $40 million pulp-and sawmill.

The man who has done most to bring pulp and timber industries to Alaska is Territorial Governor B. (for nothing) Frank Heintzleman. He has spent 36 years, ever since he came to Alaska as a Yale Forestry School graduate, trying to lure investment capital into the territory. Now the need for industrial development is greater than ever. The military construction program, which has sunk $1.7 billion in Alaskan roads and bases, is soon scheduled to taper off. The canned-salmon industry, hard hit by a poor 1953 catch, seems headed for an even worse one this year. But Heintzleman is looking toward other industries to take up the slack in the economy, put Alaska on the road to industrialization.

Expansion Ahead. Alaskan hopes for oil production were spurred last week when Standard Oil Co. of California got a contract to explore on the Kenai Peninsula. Phillips Petroleum already has a contract requiring it to drill twelve wells over a ten-year period. The Alaska Propane Co. is studying a plan to build a pipeline that will bring natural gas into Fairbanks from Umiat, thus induce chemical companies to build plants. A hydroelectric plant at Eklutna will soon go into production with 45,000 kw. capacity, power which is already needed in the Anchorage area.

Alaskans also believe that there are big potentials in mining, since all but two of the 33 metals and minerals classified as strategic in the U.S. are present in quantity. Canadian, Alaskan and U.S. companies are already mining or testing for nickel, copper, chromium and magnetite. So far, most of these activities are small, but Heintzleman believes, now that risk capital is coming in from the pulpmakers, that expansion of Alaskan industry will be fast.

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