Fear of a Japanese invasion during World War II is the reason this highway was built when it was. Built from 1942 to 1944, its original length was 1523 miles, but it is now 1,387 miles due to straightening and realigning over the years. Opened to the public in 1948 as a gravel road, the highway is now paved over its entire length.
Dawson Creek's major claim to fame is its location as Mile "0" of the renowned Alaska Highway, built in 1942 to provide a road route to Alaska from the continent. An engineering landmark, the major portion was built in nine months by 27,000 civilians and US Army Engineers.
One of the books to be written on the construction of the Alaska Highway was this one,
Northwest Epic: The Building of the Alaska Highway. Written by Heath Twichell, the hardcover book was published by St. Martin's Press on July 1, 1992, fifty years after the opening of the highway.
Northwest Epic is the panoramic story of the courageous U.S. Army Engineers and civilian contractors who toiled in the tense months after Pearl Harbor to build a 1,500-mile emergency supply line through the rugged Canadian Rockies to isolated military bases in Alaska. The construction of this winding gravel road--GI's called it the ALCAN--was very much an all-American adventure: blacks, whites, and natives working together under the harshest extremes of climate and terrain--racing to bolster Alaska's defenses and deter another Japanese attack on North American soil.
It is a story of ambitious men, such as Lieutenant General Brehon B. Somervell, the Army's suavely ruthless chief logistician, who brooked no opposition to his grandiose schemes. "Dynamite in a Tiffany Box" some called him. It is the story of Master Sergeant Wansley Hill and thousands of other black soldiers who, unwanted by their country for duty on the front lines, nonetheless proved themselves steadfast heroes in the land of the midnight sun. And it is also the story of natives like Charlie McDonald, a guide whose intimate knowledge of the land--with its dense forests, impassable muskeg bogs, and unmapped mountain valleys--was used by the Army Engineers to help build a road that has brought fundamental change to a once-remote corner of the North American continent.
The Alaska Highway--with its hundreds of bridges, chain of airfields, and oil refinery and pipeline system (known as CANOL)--opened to traffic in late 1942 and was in full use one year later. Though one of the greatest feats of twentieth-century macro-engineering, this huge project sparked as much protest as patriotism. Critics argued that the road was in the wrong place and would have little postwar value; a well-publicized investigation of CANOL's excesses gave a critical boost to the career of Senator Harry S. Truman.
Despite such controversy, the completion of the highway provided a historical watershed for the territory of Alaska, for in the decades that followed, the land would be propelled, often reluctantly, from a pristine refuge, a nineteenth-century land inhabited by natives, dreamers, and rugged individualists, into the twentieth century.
In the tradition of David McCullough's
The Path Between the Seas, Heath Twichell's Northwest Epic is a sweeping and richly textured history, a book that tells of almost forgotten hardships and heroics during the darkest days of World War II.
From Amazon
DAWSON CREEK MILE "0"
ALASKA (ALCAN) HIGHWAY
At this spot in the spring of 1942 at the height of World War 2 the US Army engineers began the construction of the overland route to Alaska. Nine months later at a cost of over $140,000.000 the road was completed. This is a road construction feat unsurpassed in modern times. 11,000 troops & 16,000 civilians were employed in this project.
There are 133 bridges & 8,000 culverts embodied in the 1523 miles of gravel highway. The rattle and roar of the mighty bulldozers was a source of amazement to both the local white man and the Northern Indian.
Over this lifeline to the northwest, thousands of troops, food & war supplies have been transported. In more recent times the mighty H Bomb was known to travel this route. It was maintained by the Canadian Army until April 1964. Maintenance was then taken over by the Dept. of Public Works, Ottawa.
The Mile 0 Post is located one block due south of the Station Museum in downtown Dawson Creek. The post symbolizes our designation as Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. While downtown, spend some time and explore some of Dawson Creek’s unique stores and restaurants. Your photograph on the Mile 0 Post is a “must do” for a great take home memory!
From Tourism Dawson Creek