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| Lewes Dam |
On Friday, August 3rd, after a HUGE breakfast of sourdough pancakes, reindeer sausage, fruit, juice and coffee at the
Sourdough Campground, we filled up the tank and tires before heading out of Tok on the ALCAN Highway. About 90 miles later the rain found us as we crossed back into Yukon. The stretch of the ALCAN between the border and Haines Junction, YT, earns the dubious distinction (in our book) as the worst 'paved' road in all of North America. (The McCarthy Road earns the title for the worst 'gravel' road, barely edging out the Top of the World Highway near Chicken.)
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| Along the ALCAN Highway |
We drove through the pouring rain for a total of 10 and 1/2 hours and only managed to advance 400 miles, an average of less than 40 miles an hour, owing to the weather and the abysmal condition of the road. We stopped briefly in Whitehorse, YT, at the WalMart to stock up on some supplies and found easily 35 to 40 other RVs choking the parking lot. We drove on to
Lewes Dam over the Yukon River where we camped for the night at the foot of the bridge in the continuing rain. Grr.
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| Along the ALCAN Highway |
On Saturday morning, with the rain gone and the sun out in full force, the river next to us glowed a deep blue. As we made our way further down the ALCAN, we could see the beauty of all Yukon stretched out to the horizon all around us. Except for the ribbon of roadway, the wilderness here is completely intact, seemingly untouched by the evidence of man. The
St. Elias Mountain Range towered off to the south as countless creeks, streams and rivers crossed under bridges beneath us.
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| Sign Post Forest |
As we neared
Watson Lake, the
Sign Post Forest came into view. To stem the homesickness while working on the ALCAN in 1942, a young Carl Lindley of Danville, Illinois posted a sign with the mileage to his hometown. Following suit, over 76,000 license plates, homemade plaques and road signs have been added to the site, with more than 2,000 new ones tacked to the posts each year.
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| Sign Post Forest gnome |
We walked over to the
Northern Lights Space and Science Centre, a large building housing a planetarium where we watched 2 short films. One attempted to describe the size of the universe and the other was a video montage of 7 months' of recordings of the aurora borealis, mostly from northern Norway. We headed back to the
Sign Post Forest and admired the variety and volume of the signs. From all over the world and employing all manner of materials, the signs are crowded onto the 4 sides of each of hundreds of poles. We walked amongst them and came to a small clearing where some of the relics of the highway's construction sit rusting in the grass. One such beast is 'Gertrude', a 1938 International tractor used for 40 years, both on the ALCAN project as well as on a number of Yukon building projects.
The information center here, virtually obscured among the
Sign Post Forest, is its own hidden gem. Inside we found a brief but excellent display of historic photographs and exhibits of the ALCAN. The highway was an enormous undertaking at a huge expense in terms of labor, money and equipment at a time when the U.S. was beginning to fight a war on two fronts. Just following Japan's
invasion of Alaska's Aleutian islands, the U.S. government gave the go-ahead to begin construction on the road, though it would be a full month before Canada's prime minister would agree to the project. In a scant 8 months' time, thousands of U.S. Army soldiers cut a rough pioneer road through the wilderness from
Dawson Creek, BC, to
Delta Junction, Alaska, a 1422 mile muddy path barely adequate even for military use. But what they started the Public Roads Administration (PRA) would finish. Over the next year, the PRA, with the help of more than 80 different contracting companies, would improve the road before it was sold back to Canada in 1946 at the war's end for half of the original cost of construction (about $77 million). Not only was it not a bargain, the Canadian government soon discovered that the machinery was as decrepit and in need of repair as the road itself. Not surprisingly, the highway was completely replaced over the next several years.
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| Canol Road relics |
The ALCAN highway crossed over 8,000 streams and rivers for which either culverts, pontoon bridges, suspension bridges or flimsy log trestles were built to support the heavy Army truck traffic going over them. Not to be outdone in terms of scope or money spent, the
Canol Road Project was designed to supply the massive fuel needs for the highway's construction. To achieve this, a pipeline was built from Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories, hundreds of miles from the ALCAN at Johnson's Crossing. Unfortunately for the
Canol Road Project, the Japanese forces were driven from the Aleutian Islands and the majority of the oil needed was shipped to Skagway and brought to the ALCAN via the White Pass and Yukon Route at significantly less cost. After the $135 million price tag (compared with the $140 million spent on the ALCAN) and with an average single barrel of refined oil at more than 4 times the going price, the
Canol Road project was deemed an utter failure and waste of public money after only a year of operation.
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| Sign Post Forest |
We watched the short film about the ALCAN at the visitor center before refueling and getting back on the road. With the lure of
bison near the highway, we drove for several more hours before stopping at a pullout for the night. So far, we've seen where they rubbed the bark off of hundreds of trees trying to scratch their bug bites, and we've seen a fair amount of droppings, but no actual
buffaloes yet. We hunkered down for happy hour and cards. What a beautiful sunshine-y day...finally!
The information center here, virtually obscured among the Sign Post Forest, is its own hidden gem. Inside we found a brief but excellent display of historic photographs and exhibits of the ALCAN. The highway was an enormous undertaking at a huge expense in terms of labor, money and equipment at a time when the U.S. was beginning to fight a war on two fronts. Just following Japan's invasion of Alaska's Aleutian islands, the U.S. government gave the go-ahead to begin construction on the road, though it would be a full month before Canada's prime minister would agree to the project. In a scant 8 months' time, thousands of U.S. Army soldiers cut a rough pioneer road through the wilderness from Dawson Creek, BC, to Delta Junction, Alaska, a 1422 mile muddy path barely adequate even for military use. But what they started the Public Roads Administration (PRA) would finish. Over the next year, the PRA, with the help of more than 80 different contracting companies, would improve the road before it was sold back to Canada in 1946 at the war's end for half of the original cost of construction (about $77 million). Not only was it not a bargain, the Canadian government soon discovered that the machinery was as decrepit and in need of repair as the road itself. Not surprisingly, the highway was completely replaced over the next several years.
The ALCAN highway crossed over 8,000 streams and rivers for which either culverts, pontoon bridges, suspension bridges or flimsy log trestles were built to support the heavy Army truck traffic going over them. Not to be outdone in terms of scope or money spent, the Canol Road Project was designed to supply the massive fuel needs for the highway's construction. To achieve this, a pipeline was built from Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories, hundreds of miles from the ALCAN at Johnson's Crossing. Unfortunately for the Canol Road Project, the Japanese forces were driven from the Aleutian Islands and the majority of the oil needed was shipped to Skagway and brought to the ALCAN via the White Pass and Yukon Route at significantly less cost. After the $135 million price tag (compared with the $140 million spent on the ALCAN) and with an average single barrel of refined oil at more than 4 times the going price, the Canol Road project was deemed an utter failure and waste of public money after only a year of operation.
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