Adak Update Hiking

A view of Downtown Adak, overlooking Sweeper Cove

Historic Guide Introduction | Downtown Historical Markers | Remote Historical Markers

World War II Historic Resources

Evaluations of the physical remainders of the facilities and site features related to Adaks's World War II history have determined that the former Adak Naval Complex contains, as follows, three National Register resources:

Adak Army Base and Adak Naval Operating Base National Historic Landmark. It is considered a historic site with several areas and eight structures listed as contributing elements but has no defined boundary. This resource is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Adak World War II Cultural Landscape Historic District. This resource has a defined boundary and 30 structures (including the 8 on the NHL), plus several man made landscape features identified as contributing features. This resource has been determined eligible, but has not been formally submitted for listing in the National Register.
Old Bering Chapel. This building is considered individually eligible for the National Register.

For More Information

More detail on Adak's role in World War II and the Cold War and more information on the remaining historic resources is provided in a second pamphlet titled "Remote Guardian." There is also a video of the same title available for on-line viewing.

Reading the Remains

While Adak has few obvious and prominent buildings that clearly relate to the island's World War II era history, numerous structures and smaller buildings as well as the altered landscape itself define Adak's past and offer insight into this critical period of American history. The Army and Navy dredged, filled, rocked, and both leveled and adapted to the topography in an effort to convert the natural setting into one that could meet the needs of a wartime combat base. The remote location combined with the compressed time frame for build up resulted in extensive use of wood frame construction and the even more temporary pre-fabricated Quonset and Pacific Huts. These buildings were not meant to last and most of them are in fact gone. The permanent changes to the landscape remain and therefore represent the most significant evidence of the World War II era. These landscape features form the underlying fabric that ties the scattered structural remains into a cohesive whole.

Army Depot, 1944 The various functions required different physical layouts, but all sought to take maximum advantage of the existing environment. The airstrips and hangar areas needed to be located on the flattest topography. In order to quickly provide such an area, a tidal basin was drained and a series of dikes and canals were constructed that are still present. The Navy seaplane base was constructed between two bodies of water, both of which were used as runways. Waterfront storage and supply depots and ship maintenance facilities were located at those areas of the shoreline best suited for ships. Several small-scale anti-aircraft defensive positions were established on the high promontories that overlooked strategic sites such as the harbor entrance or the airfield. However, the absence of large-scale defensive earthworks indicates a military installation predicated on an offensive rather than defensive posture. In contrast, the Japanese occupying Kiska and Attu concentrated their efforts on developing a labyrinth of defensive positions and never completed a runway or port facility.

Development in the key operational areas was compact, but away from these areas, the buildings were placed in widely scattered, internally focused clusters of related functional use. The need for fresh water was met by locating facilities near streams and damming other streams to create reservoirs. The road network followed the topographic contours thereby conserving time and materials, but resulted in the lack of direct connections between the different sections of the base.