When I first started teaching back in the 1980s, one of the topics was the Trans Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS).
Check the main Alyeska pipeline website for all the relevant information.
Consider the particular 'story' here - there are other views on this construction project of course.
It was around the time of the Exxon Valdez, and the pipeline was installed as a way of transporting oil from the North Shore and Prudhoe Bay. It had to be built using a whole range of techniques to keep it from breaching in the case of earthquakes, crossing rivers whose regime showed a remarkable range of discharge values which required a lot of engineering and moving through permafrost.
It's somewhere I have always wanted to visit.
This Guardian article brings the topic up to date.
For more on this, read the section in the late Barry Lopez's seminal 'Arctic Dreams', where he visits the pipeline and the access road.
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