Of Alaska highway numbers and names

]Gary and I sat visiting with two of our bed and breakfast guest couples after dinner one June evening several years ago when we ran Nabesna House B&B out of our home in Slana. One of them asked, “Is there more road construction on Highway No. 1?” He was greeted with a couple of blank looks and then we had to ask: “Which road is No. 1?”

This was our fifth summer to accommodate bed and breakfast guests and the questions were usually in regard to traveling north or south on the Tok Cut-Off, or driving out to the end of our graveled Nabesna Road. Road numbers versus road names were not an issue, until that June night.

One of the couples had lived in Alaska for 20 years. They were out from Anchorage to use their four-wheelers on trails in the Wrangell St. Elias Park. The nearly two inches of rain received that day had not dampened their spirits. The other couple, on their first Alaska adventure from Seattle, was planning to see and photograph the sights along the highways. Lousy weather had ruined their hopes of a flightseeing trip out of Gulkana and they thought it was a miracle their rented car made it through the Chistochina road construction.

Road maps were obviously important to the man from Washington, and he was fond of the highway numbers. He heated up the discussion a bit when he said that the highways had been given numbers to make it easy, that the numbers were posted all along the roadways, that there weren’t that many of them and, frankly, it shouldn’t be that hard to learn them.

Our Alaskan guests and my husband, Gary, argued that the roads had names, that everyone knew them, and there was no point in learning the numbers. As the debate proceeded, I thought about how Gary and I followed the highway numbers when we had recently traveled in Louisiana and Colorado.

Eventually, the whole thing seemed important enough for me to produce my trusty, laminated Alaska map from the 2001 Milepost. As we got our bearings with the map, I traced my finger along what I thought I knew: “Highway No. 1 must start in Anchorage and continue …”

“No,” our Washington guest responded, “It starts way down here in Homer.” It was then that we Alaskans discovered that the numbers do not necessarily correspond with the names we know and the highway numbers in some instances overlap more than one named highway. Highway No. 1, it turns out, could be restated as the Sterling, Seward, Glenn, a few-miles-of-the-Richardson and the Tok Cut-Off Highway!

The gentleman from Washington had won possession of the map by now. We asked him, “Does the Denali Highway have a number? How many highway numbers are there?”

The highest number we found was No. 11, but both the Seward and Steese highways were labeled No. 6. There wasn’t a No. 9, though, so maybe one of those sixes was upside down. This was confusing.

How about that highway over by Nome? Are the ferry routes numbered?

Our number-loving guest, a computer programmer (it figures) tried his best to answer our questions, and then came up with one of his own. “Hey, this No. 10 Highway near Cordova begins and ends in the middle of nowhere, and then here’s another separate section of No. 10 by Chitina. What’s up with that?”

One of the Alaskans asserted that Cordova was a great place, certainly not the middle of nowhere. But no one tried to explain that a railroad had once become a road, and then the road largely disappeared, victim to landslide and washouts and disrepair. After the computer programmer’s reaction to the Chisto road construction, maybe it was better we didn’t describe vanishing highways.

We learned more about him, though, as he described how he had helped develop a website for interstate travel and that there are actual interstate numbers for Alaska. He also explained how usually the north/south interstates are assigned odd numbers, whereas the east/west interstates get the even, but with Alaska highways eventually all traveling all four directions, we are unique. This led us into discussion about the Internet’s MapQuest program and the OnStar system in newer cars, and how sometimes inaccurate computer directions are given for locales in Alaska.

As it grew late, we Alaskans gave in a little and acknowledged that we should learn the highway numbers. We even jokingly agreed to be ready for a test in the morning, which luckily didn’t materialize, and all our guests parted on friendly terms and set out on their separate adventures.

That afternoon a woman called to make reservations, and I asked her which direction she was traveling.

“We’re in Denali Park and we’ll be taking Highway No. 8, then No. 4, and then No. 1. Does that sound correct?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t learned the numbers yet,” I replied. “I think you might be taking the Denali Highway, turning right onto the Richardson Highway and then taking a left onto the Tok Cut-Off.”

“Exactly,” she concurred.

Maraley McMichael is a longtime Mat-Su Valley writer and resident.