The Elegant White Elephant

In house-hungry, comfort-starved Alaska, Shangri-La is a place called POW. Officially, POW is the 400-acre Port of Whittier, located on an arm of ice-free Prince William Sound and back-dropped by the glaciated peaks of the Chugach Mountains, which provide some of the world's wildest, most breathtaking scenery.

POW is only 62 rail miles from Anchorage, but for all the good it does Alaskans, it might as well be in Tibet.

Established as an emergency defense port by the U.S. Army in 1943, it cost $55 million, has now been declared surplus property by the Pentagon; the Army wants to unload it, perhaps for as little as $800,000.

Indoors Is Unnerving Too. The most impressive of POW's ten major rein forced concrete buildings is the six-story Buckner, one of the most lavish edi fices ever built by the Army Engineers.

It has 273,660 sq. ft. of floor space, houses a 350-seat theater, staff offices, closed-circuit TV system and studio, barbershop, beauty shop, radio studio, tailor shop, newspaper office, bank, post office, 17-bed hospital, twelve-man jail, four-lane bowling alley, two 1,000-ft.

rifle ranges, an officers' club and bar, 1,000-man mess hall, kitchens and bakeries, commissary, library, chapels, fully-equipped hobby shop, lounges, dental clinic, five elevators and assorted stor age rooms.

The 14-story Hodge building is the tallest apartment house in Alaska, with 177 apartments of up to three bedrooms, bachelor officer quarters for 39, lounges, 28 laundries, rows of freezers, snack rooms, playrooms and hobby rooms. A network of tunnels connects the Hodge and other buildings, including a schoolhouse with a capacity of 200 pupils. Beyond all this is an assortment of service shops, a boat shop, telephone exchange, gymnasium, fire station, warehouses, steel docks--and a $5,500,000 power plant with enough juice (6,500 kw.) to supply a town of at least 2,000 people. The place was designed to accommodate 1,700 residents. In a real emergency it could put up 32,000. Present population: 32 civilian caretakers.

POW's main disadvantage is the weather. During summers the place is drenched by interminable rains (160 inches annually); in winter the temperature rarely drops below 0DEG F., but a year's snowfall has been measured at more than 70 ft. Winter winds blow a steady 80 m.p.h., with gusts hitting 135 m.p.h. Servicemen there rarely went outdoors in the winter without good reason. Indoors could be unnerving too, since the region is subject to frequent earth tremors.

More Cell Space? Last week in Juneau, the Alaska legislature was considering whether to take the U.S. Government up on its bargain-basement offer. The trouble is, Alaskans cannot agree on what they would do with POW if they owned it. Some want to make it the new state capital. Others want to turn it into a tourist resort, or perhaps a sort of deep-freeze Las Vegas. There was a move on to acquire it for a penitentiary; the state's jails are now badly overcrowded. But the plan was defeated when people realized that existing prisons would just fill up again with lawbreakers who are now free because of the cell shortage.

Under serious consideration is a suggestion by Alaska's Health and Welfare Commissioner Levi Browning, who wants to use POW as an institution for juvenile delinquents and the mentally ill and retarded. But opponents claim that a psychiatric center in such forbidding surroundings would set mental health back 50 years.

Frozen Idyl. Meanwhile, the 32 caretakers there are having a wonderful time. They pay $160 a month for handsomely furnished three-room apartments, get their utilities free. Once a month they take the train to Anchorage, shop at nearby Fort Richardson and hurry home to their civilized wilderness. There they can watch movies, trade books and hi-fi records, hunt and fish. Power Plant Engineer John Ireland, for example, has three boats and a hideaway cabin, fishes for herring, king salmon (up to 24 Ibs.) and halibut (to 70 Ibs.). Says he: "When the king crabs come in, the whole floor of the bay is a brown-purple carpet. We float over them and pick out the crabs we want. We've pulled up crabs 62 inches across, and bring them up two at a time on bare hooks." Adds Ireland's wife Helen, POW's postmistress: "John and my son Dick hunt wolverines and bear and caribou and deer. And in the summer we explore all these beautiful waters by boat. We even go swimming a little at the small boat harbor when it warms up."

The Irelands and their friends haven't a worry in the world--except the fear that the state will buy POW and thereby end their frozen idyl. Says Helen Ireland: "When those mental-health people came down to look over Whittier, they all felt so sorry for us, stuck off here away from the world. We got a good laugh out of them! Hah!"

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