Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
“Why don’t they just put the land bridge back?” This was my five-year-old talking. We’d been standing around the National Park Service office here in Nome and we were looking at the Bering Land Bridge Preserve maps. He was confused about this ancient “bridge” talk and I’ll admit there’s a lot to be confused about. Saying “the Bering land bridge” conjures up scenes of ramps, cable spans, pilings, and signs outside of Wales that say, “Bridge One Mile. Set Your Watches for Tomorrow and Have Correct Change Ready.” Saying “the flooded land” of Beringia seems a more accurate image of the tundra now submerged. “Bridge” is really what you don’t want to call it. Unless, of course, you’re really going to build one.
American civil engineer Y.A. Lin really wants to build one. He’s dreamed of the Intercontinental Peace Bridge since he started financing feasibility studies back in 1969. Lin has a vision of huge concrete trumpet-shaped pilings sunk into the shallow sea between the Seward and Chukotsk peninsulas with very long spans between the supports on those pilings. The Peace Bridge would have three levels: a road on top for summer traffic, an all-weather railroad in the middle, and oil and natural gas pipelines snaking along the bottom level.
This could be great! The project might spawn a whole resort culture like Michigan’s Macinaw Bridge. We could call the bridge “Lin’s Folly” or “Big Vitus.” We’d build specialty restaurants selling “walrusburgers,” promote ferry tours, build Arctic boutiques selling matreska dolls, peace bridge T-shirts, and “Strait jackets.” We could extend the Iditarod finish line to the other side of the bridge! We could hire Mark Knoppfler and his band Dire Straits to perform at the ribbon cutting! Wales could build a Holiday Inn!
But, come on, Mr. Lin. It’s too remote. We don’t have the roads. (Lin projects a cost of $50 billion for road construction alone.) We don’t have the railroads. And we’ve got this pesky ice problem. But, then, Nome wasn’t a permanent settlement before gold was discovered: there were no roads, no town, no Board of Trade Saloon. It was gold that brought the infrastructure–such as it is–and it may be the construction of the Intercontinental Peace Bridge and the black gold that travels over from Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk that puts honeybuckets into the Carrie McLean Museum for good. But even though an Alaska-Chukotka bridge seems an Arctic hare-brained idea, I check our weekly Engineering National Review magazine faithfully for Lin’s updates. I want to be ready to set my watch for tomorrow and start working on my jar of change.
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