Sterling Highway

Traffic blocked between Seward, Anchorage and western Kenai Peninsula

This summer, Kenaitze Tribe officials say archaeologists and cultural observers found stone tools, animal bones and the impressions of homes along the path of the Sterling Highway bypass project.

Department of Transportation officials talked the Sterling safety corridor, Kenai Spur, Cooper Landing Bypass and more in a legislative town hall Thursday.

Four crashes and six fatalities have happened on the Sterling Highway in the past two weeks. Troopers say those high rates come down to unsafe, distracted driver behavior.

A car struck a concrete mixer head on near Cooper Landing Friday. 30-year-old Sherika Hatten and a 2-year-old boy died in the crash.

A Wisconsin woman was killed in a head-on collision near Sterling, and a Clam Gulch resident died after swerving off the road south of Soldotna.

An erratic driver collided with another car on July 23 on the Seward Highway. The driver, Gideon Grady, was arrested this week, related to the death of his passenger Gregory Green.

Troopers say a car pulled out onto the Sterling Highway in front of a motorhome without stopping at a stop sign. The two collided, and one of the motorhome's occupants was hospitalized with severe injuries.

Alaska State Troopers say the plane experienced engine trouble and made an emergency landing on the Sterling Highway. Neither the pilot nor passenger were injured.

The Alaska Department of Transportation will work on buying steel for the bridge over Juneau Creek Canyon, and is in the early stages of a project to improve traffic flow at the intersection of the Sterling and Seward Highways near Tern Lake.