2023-11-23 01:48:04
Thursday, November 23, 2023, 00:48
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Whittier is a quiet, small Alaskan town of just 270 inhabitants that has a peculiarity. 85% of its population lives in the same building. Well, in reality he lives and also spends a large part of his life there because on its fourteen floors that block, the Begich tower, houses 200 apartments but also the town hall, the clinic, the police station, the post office, the grocery store, the laundry and the church. It is not the only building in the municipality, but it has made Whittier known as the ‘city under one roof’.
The tower is a former army barracks house built in 1953 to house the families of soldiers transferred to Whittier ten years earlier, during World War II, when that location was ideal to build a military base with which to threaten Japan. Of the initially planned complex, in the end only this block was built and another one that was badly damaged in the great earthquake that shook Alaska in 1964. If it remained standing, there would be the bowling alley, the movie theater, the barbershop, the shooting center and the six cells of the town jail.
When the Army decided to abandon the facilities in the sixties, some of the families chose to stay there and the rest of the apartments (there are 50 for singles and 150 with two and three bedrooms) were occupied by residents of the municipality who agreed that it was appropriate. to copy the idea of the military; Given the inhospitable climate and the difficulties of access, the most practical thing was to concentrate basic services in the same block that could also be connected through tunnels to other necessary infrastructure, such as the school. Only a few single-family houses, some businesses, a bar-restaurant and an inn are outside the complex.
The town’s economic activity is supported by the port, fishing, canning and, more recently, tourism. In fact, inside the tower there is also a ‘bed and breakfast’ with views of the Billings Glacier. Each year, the town welcomes about 700,000 people, most of whom arrive by the Anchorage ferry or cruise ship. Today, as when the four-kilometer railway tunnel that crosses that mass of ice and is the only land connection to other municipalities was enabled so that cars could also use it, the town is divided between those who would like to see it grow thanks to tourism and those who would prefer to leave them alone.
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