Buckner Building, Whittier, Alaska

5/28/2003

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I searched the entire basement 3 times looking for the pedestrian tunnel leading to the Hodge building, but the only tunnel I found seemed to be on the wrong end of the building, away from the town, and was blocked too well for the few tools I had brought. Locals told me that this led to the power and heating plant east of town, but that there were branches leading elsewhere. A store clerk traced out an improbable web of tunnels on a map, telling me that they had been built partly in the 1940s to fool the japanese into thinking the town deserted, and partly in the 1950s due to the huge snow buildup that occured every winter.
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