History
The concept of an overland connection crossing the Bering Strait goes back before the 20th century. William Gilpin, first governor of the Colorado Territory, envisioned a vast "Cosmopolitan Railway" in 1890 linking the entire world via a series of railways. Two years later, Joseph Strauss, who went on to design over 400 bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, put forward the first proposal for a Bering Strait railroad bridge in his senior thesis. The project was presented to the government of the Russian Empire, but it was rejected.
A syndicate of American railroad magnates proposed in 1904 (via a French spokesman) a Siberian-Alaskan railroad from Cape Prince Wales in Alaska through a tunnel under the Bering Strait and across northeastern Siberia to Irkutsk via Cape Deshnev, Verkhnekolymsk and Yakutsk. The proposal was for a 90-year lease, and exclusive mineral rights for 8 miles (13 km) each side of the right-of-way. It was debated by officials and finally turned down on March 20, 1907.
Czar Nicholas II approved a tunnel (possibly the American proposal above) in 1905. Its cost was estimated at $65 million and $300 million including all the railroads.
These hopes were dashed with the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution.
Interest was renewed during World War II with the completion in 1942-43 of the Alaska Highway linking the remote territory of Alaska with Canada and the continental United States. In 1942 the Foreign Policy Association envisioned the highway continuing to link with Nome near the Bering Strait, linked by motorway to the rail-head at Irkutsk, using an alternative sea and air ferry service across the Bering Strait.
In 1958 engineer T. Y. Lin suggested the construction of a bridge across the Bering strait "to foster commerce and understanding between the people of the United States and the Soviet Union". Ten years later he organized the Inter-Continental Peace Bridge Inc, a non-profit institution organized to further this proposal. At that time he made a feasibility study of a Bering Strait bridge and estimated the cost to be $1 billion for the 50-mile (80 km) span. In 1994 he updated the cost to more than $4 billion. Like Gilpin, Lin envisioned the project as a symbol of international cooperation and unity, and dubbed the project the Intercontinental Peace Bridge.
In September 2005 when launching the Universal Peace Federation, Sun Myung Moon brought new light to the idea of building what Moon calls the "Bering Strait Peace King bridge and tunnel", calling all the world's governments to make a joint effort to realize world peace. On February 10, 2009, Sun Myung Moon's "Foundation for Peace and Unification" announced a competition for the design of a bridge across the Strait via the Diomede Islands. The winner (announced June 11, 2009), was a project entitled "Diomede Archipelago". It proposes a series of artificial islands that form two archipelagos extending the two continents, and three tunnels connecting the two Diomede islands and the archipelagos.
Read more about this topic: Bering Strait Crossing
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)