The thin line between Canada and Alaska [View all]
Marked by metal cones and a clear-cut swath 20 feet wide, Alaska's border with Canada is one of the great feats of wilderness surveying.
The boundary between Alaska and Canada is 1,538 miles long. The line is obvious in some places, such as the Yukon River valley, where crews have cut a straight line through forest on the 141st Meridian. The boundary is invisible in other areas, such as the summit of 18,008-foot Mount St. Elias.
In the early 1900s, workers cemented boundary monuments made of aluminum-bronze and standing 2.5 feet tall along much of the border's length.
The country that makes up the border is some of the wildest in North America. Spanning a gap equal to the distance between San Francisco and St. Louis, the border intersects only one settlement: Hyder in Southeast Alaska. Starting in 1905, surveyors and other workers of the International Boundary Commission trekked into this wilderness to etch into the landscape a brand-new political boundary.
Read more: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/science/2018/03/17/the-thin-line-between-canada-and-alaska/
Boundary monument 112, damaged by river ice, at the Yukon River crossing east of Eagle. (Ned Rozell)
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