Environment: Two Throughways to the Arctic

An untamed wonderland may soon be opened to motorists

As roads go, they are hardly spectacular, merely long gray ribbons of dirt and gravel. But the two highways—one in Alaska, the other in Canada—cannot be judged by initial appearances alone. North America's first throughways to the frozen north, they reach far beyond the Arctic Circle and slice through some of the continent's grandest terrain.

Running alongside the great pipeline, for which it was built, the Alaskan Haul Road stretches 397 miles from Livengood (pop. 25), an old mining town north of Fairbanks, to the...