Local pens book about railroad history
Caleb M. Soptelean
Evan McKinney holds his new book, High Iron to Fairbanks, a fictional history of the making of the Alaska Railroad.
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POLSON – A man who worked as a numbers cruncher throughout his career never thought he’d write a book about history.
But such is life. Evan McKinney’s historical novel, “High Iron to Fairbanks: Building the Historic Alaska Railroad,” was published late last year.
Culbertson native McKinney, 69, moved to the White Swan Point north of Polson after he and his wife, Diana, built a cabin there in the late 1990s.
In the winter of 2010-11, McKinney had a lot of free time on his hands. His wife was working at a local medical clinic and the area got a lot of snow that winter. He had been infatuated with Alaska for a long time, he said, and decided to undertake a winter reading project about the Alaska Railroad.
He had worked in “The Last Frontier” three times: four years in the 1970s as a federal auditor, mainly on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline; two years in the 1980s on the transfer of the Alaska Railroad from the federal government to Alaska; and five years in the 1990s as a railroad employee in the areas of purchasing, rail barges and maintenance and operations.
The U.S. decided to sell the railroad to the state for some $22 million in 1985, McKinney said, noting the railroad had been losing money but the state turned it into a money-making venture.
The railroad was built from 1914-23. McKinney found the story of its creation interesting, citing the people who battled the environment, the terrain and the federal bureaucracy.
To add to the obstacles, World War I broke out right after they got started on the railroad, he said. Consequently, the railroad lost laborers who went to fight, including Col. Frederick Mears, an Army Corps of Engineers employee who was leading the project. After the war, Mears returned to help finish it. McKinney’s book is historical-based fiction and includes characters such as “Poetic Pete,” a “jolly looking fella who always hummed to himself” and quoted the poems of Robert Service, a British-Canadian known as the “bard of the Yukon.”
The book “reads like a history book with personality, thanks to the likable, lively and humorous characters who inhabit its highly-readable pages,” said Bill Sheffield, a former Alaska Railroad president and governor of Alaska who is quoted on the book’s cover.
McKinney had some local help with his book. Carmine Mowbray told him about Todd Communications of Anchorage, which is distributing the paperback in Alaska, including in railroad gift shops.
In addition, McKinney has placed the book for sale in a number of bookstores in cities across Montana, including Missoula, Helena, Deer Lodge, Butte and Billings.
“It’s been a blast going around and talking to the independent bookstore people,” said McKinney, who plans on adding more bookstores to the list.
The book, which sells for $18.95, is also available at Super 1 Foods in Polson and online at highirontofairbanks.com.
