Alaska Highway

The Alaska Highway means different things to different people. Some people consider it to be a great adventure while others think of it as simply a long drive. I heard one young woman describe it as “a thousand miles too much scenery.” I have traveled the Alaska Highway about a dozen times, but I still find myself wanting to make the trip again – looking forward to it and enjoying every mile of it.

The idea of an overland link between Alaska and the Lower 48 was studied as early as 1930 during the administration of President Herbert Hoover. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, construction of the highway became a military necessity because Alaska was considered to be vulnerable to an invasion by Japanese forces. When the Japanese invaded Attu and Kiska islands in the Aleutians in June 1942, there was an added sense of urgency to complete the highway.

The highway to Alaska was approved by the United States Army on February 6, 1942, and construction of it was authorized on February 11 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Construction of this pioneer road officially started on March 9, 1942, and ended on October 25, 1942 = a period of 8 months and 12 days. The military name for this trail through the wilderness was ALCAN, and some people still refer to the Alaska Highway as the ALCAN. There were restrictions on civilian traffic on the highway during the war years. The highway was officially renamed the Alaska Highway in March 1943 and opened to the public in 1948.

The War Department determined that the Alaska Highway would be built on the same general route followed by aircraft flying from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Fairbanks, Alaska, as well as existing winter roads, old Indian trails, rivers, and “sight” engineering. Airfields along this route formed the Northwest Staging Route. More than 8,000 war planes were ferried along this chain of airfields from Great Falls, Montana, to Ladd AFB in Fairbanks, Alaska. The aircraft were flown from Fairbanks to Nome to Russia as part of the Russian-American Lend Lease Program.

A formal agreement between the United States and Canada in March 1942 secured rights-of-way for the road. The United States agreed to pay for construction and to give the Canadian portion of the highway to the Canadian government after the war. Canada agreed to furnish the rights-of-way, to waive import duties, sales taxes, income taxes, and immigration regulations, and to provide materials for construction along the route.

More than 10,000 American troops in regiments from the United States Army Corps of Engineers went north to work on the road. Civilian engineers and equipment were organized by the Public Roads Administration. They located and shipped trucks, road-building equipment, office furniture, food, tents and other supplies.

Soldiers and civilians worked seven days a week and endured mosquitoes and black flies in summer and temperatures below zero degrees in winter. Communication between headquarters and field parties was sparse, and there was never enough equipment. Crews worked from the western end of the road as well as from the eastern end and met at Contact Creek on September 25. Vehicles were traveling the entire length of the ALCAN by October.

The Alaska Highway was officially opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony at Soldiers’ Summit at Kluane Lake on November 20, 1942. It was rededicated on November 20, 1992, during the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Highway. It was also named an International Historical Engineering Landmark in 1996.

The Alaska Highway starts in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, at Mile 0. It travels in a northwesterly direction to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory (Historical Mile 635). It crosses the Alaska border at Port Alcan (Historical mile 1221.8). The official end of the Alaska Highway is at Delta Junction, Alaska (Historical Mile 1422), and the unofficial end of the highway is at Fairbanks, Alaska (Historical Mile 1520).

The highway is about 35 miles shorter today than it was in the 1940’s, and it continues to get shorter as reconstruction takes off more miles. The condition of the highway continues to improve with reconstruction. When I first drove it in 1973, there were vast stretches of mud. Today the entire highway is paved, but it is still plagued with frost heaves.

Driving the Alaska Highway is an adventure that everyone should take at least once. I recommend that anyone making the trip take along the latest copy of The Milepost. This book is a “must” for making the trip. In fact, much of the information for this post came from my copy of The Milepost (pages 97, 104).