The Alaska Town That Lives in One Building

Whittier, Alaska sits on the western shore of Prince William Sound, about 60 miles southeast of Anchorage. About 272 people live there. Roughly 85% of them live in the same building.

The building is Begich Towers, a 14-storey concrete block built in 1957 by the U.S. Army as housing for soldiers stationed at Camp Sullivan — the deep-water port the military had carved out of the glacier-fed coastline during the Second World War. The Army left in the 1960s. The towers became condominiums in 1972, renamed for the Alaska congressman Nick Begich, who had disappeared on a plane in the area the same year.

The building is the town. The post office sits on the ground floor, beside a general store, a laundromat, a police office, a Baptist church, and a B&B. The school is connected by an underground passage so children do not walk outside in winter. Whittier averages 197 inches of precipitation a year, mostly snow, and gusts off the sound routinely top hurricane force.

Until 2000, the only way in was by boat or rail. The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel — a 13,300-foot single-lane bore through Maynard Mountain, originally cut by the Army to carry trains — was rebuilt that year to handle cars on a timed schedule alternating with the train. It is the second-longest highway tunnel in North America and the only road in or out. It closes for the night, and the town is on its own.

What you get for moving there is one of the cheapest waterfront views in the United States, glaciers visible from the living-room window, neighbours you ride down to your mailbox in an elevator, and a winter that runs about nine months.