Harvey Gilliland came from Seattle to work at the Duncan Canal White Alice project

At the age of 23, Harvey Gilliland left his job at Western Union Telegraph Company in Seattle to take a job at the White Alice Communications System (WACS) in Duncan Canal, just 9-miles from Petersburg.

The site was 2.25 miles from the beach, according to Gilliland, and sat on a mountain at a 2,460 ft. elevation. The steep terrain between the site and beach required a 6.25-mile road with 5 major switchbacks, Gilliland noted.

Following two weeks of indoctrinization in Anchorage, "another guy and I were shipped down there in April 1961."

Gilliland learned the tropospheric scatter transmission te...