Portage: The Town the Earth Swallowed

At Mile Marker 79 on the Seward Highway, a skeletal "ghost forest" stands frozen in the tidal mudflats. These white, salt-drowned trees are the only remaining headstones for Portage, Alaska—a town that quite literally sank into the earth.

In this episode of Drive-Thru Towns, host Andrew Wilcox uncovers the story of a roadside junction where travelers once drank bourbon chilled with 1,000-year-old glacier ice. That all changed on Good Friday, 1964, when the second-largest earthquake in recorded history struck. In just four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, the ground beneath Portage liquefied, dropping the entire town eight to ten feet and handing it over to the relentless tides of Turnagain Arm.

We explore the terrifying geology of liquefaction, the irony of a town built on a recurring disaster site, and the quiet erasure of a place that infrastructure created and nature reclaimed.

If you enjoyed this deep dive into Alaska’s sunken history, please follow the show on Spotify to catch every stop on our journey through America's disappeared places.

• Instagram: @50statefamily

• LinkedIn: Andrew Wilcox

• Email: wilcoxlegal@gmail.com

• Host: Andrew Wilcox

• Theme Music: Special thanks to Chloe Jones for providing the atmospheric score. Discover more of her music at chloejonesmusic.co.uk.