Stretch of Glenn joins scenic byways club

PALMER -- Tourists and locals alike are often amazed by the breathtaking splendor of the drive from the Alaska-Canada border to Anchorage and now, in the culmination of a project that has been two years in the making, the Glenn Highway, from Eureka to Anchorage, will join just a few others that have been designated as national scenic byways.

Officials from the Federal Highway Administration, along with representatives from the Alaska Department of Transportation and the Palmer Chamber of Commerce, which was responsible for getting the ball rolling, gathered with other area residents at Palmer's historic depot building Wednesday for the official designation of the scenic route.

"We welcome you to our small family of byways," said Henry Hanka, director of America's Byways Resource Center. Hanka helps those interested in having roads in their area designated as scenic byways, and assists byway partnership boards in achieving the goals they set for their particular stretches of road. Hanka told the audience that, of the more than four million miles of highways across America, fewer than 20,000 miles have been designated as scenic byways. Among them this year are Alaska's Marine Highway, California's Death Valley and Kentucky's Red River Gorge. If the Glenn Highway Scenic Byway partnership board goes on to achieve status as an All American Road, as is now being planned, the highway will join such greats as Route 66 and Montana's Beartooth Valley.

Beyond simply providing recognition that the Glenn Highway is a wonderful drive, listing it in the national register and luring tourists looking for exceptional vistas, the designation opens the door for federal funding that will help enhance the drive. Funding for signs and interpretative centers, money to clear brush and trees to enhance views of the surrounding area and to put in additional waysides and scenic pull-offs and funds to develop self-guided geological tour brochures, for example, is available each year through the byway program on a competitive grant process.

Hanka said $25 million is available each year in federal grant money to all scenic byway partnership boards for use on their highways. The grants, Hanka said, are all merit-based and provide 80 percent of the funding for each project. Hanka added that there is no limit to the size of a project or funding request. The Bird Point visitors' center outside of Anchorage, he said, was partially completed with federal byway funds. Money is also available -- $25,000 each year -- to byway organizations as seed money to help them plan and attend training programs that will lead to enhancement of the byway. That funding represents the importance the program places on the people involved in scenic byway projects.

"It's the people that make this program," Hanka told the audience, "the people that want to tell their stories." And although stories such as Chickaloon resident Patricia Wade's fretful account of traveling the then-gravel 20 miles from her family home on Moose Creek to Chickaloon, winding around the Matanuska River, abound in the corridor partnership plan booklet, the experience of traveling the route of the Glenn Highway has changed significantly in the past several thousand years. DOT commissioner Joe Perkins told the audience Wednesday more change was in the works for the highway -- in hopes of making it a safer and more stable route.

Road work near Sutton was just recently completed, and work has already begun on the Parks and Glenn Highway Interchange. Perkins said just 40 miles of the Glenn Highway remains to be rebuilt between Palmer and Hick's Creek, work that Perkins expects to be completed in the next four to five years. Perkins said the Caribou Creek portion of the rebuild has gone out for bid and construction should begin next year. Also slated for rehabilitation, Perkins said, is the Long Lake section of the Glenn, which will be a somewhat more involved project. Perkins said DOT plans to relocate the highway to the other side of the canyon. A significant renovation is also slated for the Chickaloon to Hick's Creek portion of the highway -- the road will be built on the opposite side of the canyon. That change, Perkins said, is partially due to the ever-present danger of ice on the existing road.

"Winter's bad enough, but even at noon in January you can't hardly see in there," Perkins said. "I don't think the sun has ever shone in there."

Another section that will be costly to rehabilitate and may take some creative designing, Perkins said, is the Moose Creek section of the Glenn Highway. Portions of that road will be straightened and widened, Perkins said, and the end product should be breathtaking.

"That'll probably be the last [section] we do," Perkins said. "When it's finished, we'll have a real showpiece." Perkins said plenty of pull-offs will be installed in the new sections, and public hearings will be held as each new section comes up. Recognizing the fact that a new administration may mean a new DOT commissioner, the eight-year head of the department encouraged audience members to attend the hearings, stay involved, and "push DOT." More information about the scenic byway program can be obtained at www.byways.org.