Alaska Highway

Few construction projects of the twentieth century match the building of the Alaska Highway for drama, setting, and engineering challenge. From the authorization for highway constuction in February 1942 until the completion of a pioneer road through the harsh northern landscape, scarcely eight months passed. The struggle of “man and machine against the wilderness” conducted under the pressure of war captured the imagination of the North American public. The annual flood of tourists along the “Route of '42” suggests that this sense of drama and fascination is still alive.

In recognition of the 40th anniversary of this epidsode in Canadian-American cooperation, a symposium was held at Fort St. John, one of several communities that were, and still are, profoundly affected by the building of the road. The papers presented at this interdisciplinary gathering of international scholars of the Canadian and American births illustrate the significance of the highway in such diverse spheres as Canadian-American relations, British Columbia politics, American military history, and the evolution of the northern society.

The first three papers in the book deal with the negotiation and planning phases at the provincial and state levels in the 1920s and 1930s and with the considerations that led American military planners to push the road through as a wartime proejct. Surveying, building, maintaining, and operating the highway are the subjects of the following papers, while the next two deal with the postwar administartion of the road by Canada.

The remaining papers discuss the impact of the highway on Canadian-United States wartime relations and on the economy and society of the region – including its effects on the native population and wildlife resources – and on the eclipse of Dawson City as the administrative and economic centre of the Yukon Territory.

With much new information and insight, this book makes an original and important contribution to twentieth-century Canadian history. It will be of interest not only to historians specializing in northern studies but also to local history buffs who inhabit the region traversed by the highway.