Kansas Guard engineers raise Cordova staging pad 18 feet for a future deep-sea port

The Kansas Army National Guard's 891st Engineer Battalion raised a 5.1-acre staging pad 18 feet and built five pedestrian trails in Cordova this year, preparing ground for a future deep-sea port in partnership with the Native Village of Eyak.

The work was an Innovative Readiness Training mission, a program that trains units while delivering key services to American communities. The Guard calls it the largest Secretary of War-funded project of its kind in the country.

It builds on 2025 work, when 25 soldiers grubbed and cleared the project site.

The new trails connect the access roadway to the coast, reaching landing beaches, which the Guard says are required for maritime and port operations, and civilian fishing areas. Native stone steps, switchbacks and hand-built retaining walls carry foot traffic down steep coastal bluffs and were meant to curb erosion. Crews built the trails to US Forest Service construction standards, with drainage, grading and tread stabilization, using only timber and stone from the surrounding area.

One hundred soldiers rotated through Cordova in four two-week shifts. Each team was led by an engineer officer and included 20 enlisted engineers, among them heavy equipment operators, carpentry and masonry specialists, electricians and plumbers, along with a combat medic. Over eight weeks they logged more than 6,000 man-hours, burned more than 6,000 gallons of fuel and hauled 37,000 cubic yards of fill, running a rock truck, a roller, a bulldozer, an excavator and two mini excavators.

Three culinary specialists from the 69th Troop Command's field feeding platoon joined each rotation. Working out of the Cordova High School kitchen, they bought groceries locally and prepared 2,500 hot meals and 1,250 sack lunches.

"IRT opportunities are relatively new to us at the 891st, but it gives our Soldiers the opportunity to make a long-lasting impact with the engineer skills they have outside of Kansas," said Capt. Austin Sigg, the projects officer in charge. "Each rotation of this mission saw the impact they had on the project, and the results will be there forever."

At the Cordova City Council's Aug. 5 meeting, Clay Koplin of Cordova Electric Cooperative said Cordova has been working with the Native Village of Eyak to target Coast Guard infrastructure, both air and water assets, and named the new deepwater port among the community's opportunities.

The Guard's account gives no cost for the work and no timeline for building the port itself.