 During World War II Tanana's airfield was one of the stops for aircraft en route to Russia as part of the Lend-Lease program.Postwar, a White Alice communications site was built on a hill nine miles behind Tanana, as a part of the Cold War Era's Distant Early Warning system (DEW-Line).Also during the 1950s the mission closed and the indigenous families still living at the mission site moved down to the main town.