Archibald Milne Hamilton’s Iraqi Road an Engineering Marvel

Tucked into a remote canyon a two-hour drive north of the Kurdish capital of Irbil, Gali Ali Beg’s waterfall is a beacon for Iraqis who pine for a quiet, safe life after decades of upheaval. There is no way to get to or leave this small town except by the Hamilton Road, built by New Zealand engineer Archibald Milne Hamilton between 1928 and 1932.

Hamilton described the building of the road in a 1937 book entitled Road through Kurdistan.

“A stunning engineering marvel that climbs and descends five mountain ranges and twists its way through a series of gorges,” Matthew Fisher writes for the Windsor Star.

“The New Zealander carved the passage out of stone nearly a century ago, because Mesopotamia’s British rulers wanted a short cut from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iranian border and eventually to Tehran and British India.”

Waimate-born Hamilton is also notable for designing the Callender-Hamilton bridge, a modular portable pre-fabricated truss bridge, patented by him in 1935.

Original article by Matthew Fisher, The Windsor Star, October 10, 2014.