1.5 hours southwest of Anchorage is a town accessed only through a tunnel under a glacier or by sea. A place where almost all of the residents live in one self-contained building with a school, store, church, USPS, and everything it takes to live under one roof. Join me as we meet some of the interesting people who live there.
► Video edited by: Natalia Santenello
► Researched by: Kymberly Redmond
Good morning, guys.
So much of this channel is about
getting into other people’s lives.
Different styles of living.
So today we’re going to go
to a town here in Alaska.
A very remote place.
Through a tunnel
under a glacier
on the other side is a building.
In that building
is all of the town’s residents
the post office
the market
the school
everything self-contained.
Let’s go on a little adventure here
to Whittier, Alaska.
PETER: Okay, here we are
coming up on the tunnel here.
You can see way up high there, a glacier.
Waterfalls coming down.
And this tunnel,
from what I understand
is shut off at 10:30 every night.
This is the one way in by road.
There’s also a port.
So it’s somewhat isolated
and removed from everything.
So it looks like the train tracks
go right through here too
So we’re actually driving
on the tracks, so that’s cool
So that, I’m gonna say,
was almost a couple miles.
That was a long tunnel.
Felt like being in a mine shaft.
So, this apartment building
from what I’ve heard
has roughly 200
or a little under 200 people.
And as we can see here
the cruise ships also come into this port.
So it must be a well-protected port
and probably some of the industry here.
Here it is, here’s the building.
Looks like something
out of the former Soviet Union.
So let’s try to get a look-see…
Meet some people.
I’m just gonna sort of walk in
and hopefully not be
too intrusive by doing so.
Hopefully we meet some cool people
that can bring us around.
Okay, it seems like
we have a lot of fisherman here.
It’s probably the big industry.
“Hodge Building”
“Circa ’56 to ’60”
Cold War story, great.
I’m not gonna read this all to you but,
“Communism was on the march across
the planet creating crisis in Europe…”
So giant radar system out here.
The Aleutian Islands
which stretch very far almost to Russia.
[door opens]
[whispers] Okay, here we have
the church service.
Some of the history here.
Look at the building
being constructed, 14 stories.
This was the hardcore pioneering times.
Get your camera rolling right now
and when we go past this door
look to the right.
PETER: Okay.
-[Peter whispers] Post office.
-I hear you got a sandwich.
Oh, I know but it’s okay.
It’s okay.