Amazing Pipeline Stories: How Building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Transformed Life in America's Last Frontier - Paperback

by Dermot Cole (Author)

In the 1970s, the world's largest construction companies invaded Alaska in a wild rush to build the 800-mile $8 billion trans-Alaska pipeline. Workers by the tens of thousands headed north, hoping to make their fortunes working on the pipeline, in a stampede that dramatically affected Alaska. With the avalanche of big money and new arrivals came new problems: drugs, prostitution, gambling, and violent crime. Rapid economic and social changes ultimately touched the lives of virtually every Alaskan. Journalist Dermot Cole, dean of the Alaska press corps, recalls the best of the pipeline stories with humor, authenticity, and drama.

Back Jacket

America needed the oil. In the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, during which Americans waited hours in line to buy rationed gasoline, the world's largest construction companies rushed north to build the 900-mile, $8 billion Trans-Alaska Pipeline. National security was at stake.
Many of the 70,000 men and women who worked on the pipeline saw it as a way to find a new life, or to escape an old one. The three-year boom was unlike any other, surpassing even the Gold Rush for social and economic upheaval that touched nearly every Alaskan in some way.
With an avalance of oil money came trouble -- drugs, prostitution, gambling, divorce, extortion, and violent crime. The cost of living soared. The real-estate and rental market went wild as tens of thousands came seeking fat pipeline paychecks for "seven 12s" - working seven days a week, twelve hours a day.
Thirty-five years later, award-winning journalist Dermot Cole of the "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner," recalls the best of the pipeline stories with humor, authenticity, and drama.

Author Biography

Dermot Cole is a long-time newspaper columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. He grew up in Pennsylvania before moving to Alaska at the start of the Alaska oil boom. He studied journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and was named a Michigan Journalism Fellow in 1986-87 at the University of Michigan. He is the author of three other books about Alaska history.