FAIRBANKS — The Alaska National Guard Armory along Second Avenue in Fairbanks isn’t among the dozens of armories across Alaska that the state plans to take down or give away.
Earlier this week, Bethel radio station KYUK-AM reported the Alaska National Guard plans to divest more than 60 of the structures, which were set up during the Cold War to monitor suspicous activity in the Soviet Union.
The armories that are being taken down include one in Fort Yukon, 138 miles northeast of Fairbanks, where neither the city nor tribal community were interested in receiving the old 1,200-squre foot building, said Brian Duffy, administrative service director for the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs. The Fort Yukon armory sits on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service land, and the state plans to ask the federal agency to tear down the building, he said.
The National Guard plans to keep 18 armories in Alaska, including the one in Fairbanks. The other 17 armories that aren’t being divested are in Anchorage, Bethel, Hooper Bay, Juneau, Kenai, Ketchikan, Kipnuk, Kodiak, Klawock, Kotzebue, Kwethluk, Nome, Quinhagak, Sitka, Utqiagvik and Wasilla.
Contact Outdoors Editor Sam Friedman at 459-7545. Follow him on Twitter:@FDNMoutdoors.
