Face to Face
Elden Johnson
Engineering Advisor

Elden Johnson has spent his entire professional career working on the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Not a small feat considering his first day of work began 34 years ago, smack in the middle of the Arab oil embargo, which prompted President Nixon, in 1973, to authorize the project.

Johnson has worked for all nine of Alyeska’s presidents and has personally witnessed many changes within the company. Johnson’s first calling was to assist in the design and development of the pipeline, four years before signing up with Alyeska. Since his first day with the company in 1977, Johnson has worn many hats, and he’s proud of his achievements. Johnson affectionately declares the pipeline and the company a big part of his family.

How did you get involved with the pipeline?

During my college years as an engineering student at Michigan State, the trans-Alaska pipeline was being designed. I met an engineer from Egypt who was a permafrost expert working on TAPS design. Both the project and place stirred my imagination. Later as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I began the process of looking for my first engineering job. To my delight, I was offered a position with a company engaged in the design of TAPS for Alyeska in Houston, Texas.

Aside from the actual construction, what do you remember from those days?

I don’t remember much because there was not much time to do anything except work. Once construction started I worked a six-days-on, one-day-off schedule, in the field. I had just enough free time to taste the adventure of Alaska--mountaineering, hiking, camping, canoeing and the like. I met a wonderful girl at a Mountaineering Club of Alaska meeting in the Pioneer School House in Anchorage. I took her to Chilkoot Charlie’s for our first date and married her in 1976, six months before I married Alyeska. And that has made all the difference.

Aesthetically, what is your favorite part of the pipeline and why?

The Brooks Range north of Coldfoot, where I lived and worked. My impression of this place comes from Robert Service…

There is a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons,
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land – oh, it beckons and beckons
And I want to go back -- and I will.