Just just a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States, in collaboration with Canadian authorities, got down to achieve this construct a highway from British Columbia to Alaska, then a territory and thought of vulnerable to attack by Japan. The original 1,685 mile long road More than 10,000 soldiers took lower than nine months to finish.
A modernized version opened in 1948 and has been continually renovated and rerouted. It now measures nearly 1,400 miles from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska, in keeping with “The milestone“, a travelguide.
The highway was the centerpiece of a family road trip I took last September from Alaska to Idaho, passing through the Yukon, British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.
Relying on Google Maps won’t get you far on this drive, where cell service is scarce. To prepare, my son found a road map of Western Canada and Eastern Alaska from 1972 that continues to be fairly accurate.
The route, which takes drivers through a few of North America’s most breathtaking scenery, makes for a budget-friendly trip. We spent about $300 on gas for the whole trip in a mid-size SUV. We often camped and ate picnic meals, starting on the coast of Valdez, Alaska, where we slept on a 32-foot SUV motorboat listed on Airbnb ($68 per night) with an amazing blue heron and a seal as neighbors.
May and September, the start and end of the height months for traffic on this route, are also good times to identify wildlife, which is usually pushed to lower elevations by snow.
Lessons in patience
From Valdez we made our approach to Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve (free), the biggest national park within the USA, after which flows into the Alaska Highway at Toka small town about 90 miles from the Canadian border that plays a vital role in serving sparsely populated eastern Alaska with its grocery stores, gas stations and restaurants.
We planned to drive deep into the Yukon on the primary day, but even with only ten vehicles ahead of us on the border checkpoint, it took two hours before we reached the only agent, who asked us just a few questions – mostly about firearms and hunting – and sent us on our way the best way.
It was the primary slowdown of many brought on by stretches of unpaved roads, detours to construction sites and places where the asphalt rose above frozen ground.
Yukon Wilderness
Nearly 600 miles of the Alaska Highway go through the Yukon.
From the border the road heads southeast, past yawning valleys with winding streams and long, glacier-fed lakes Kluane National Park and Preserve, home to 19,551-foot Mount Logan, Canada’s highest mountain, and greater than 2,000 glaciers. It is co-located with neighboring Wrangell-St. Elias and other parks form a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is home to the biggest ice fields outside the polar ice caps.
“This is what the Rocky Mountains would have looked like many years ago,” said Fitz McGoey, visitor experience product developer on the park, which is about 80 percent covered in snow and ice.
As we ran out of daylight, we opted for the primary campsite we could find north of the park. Quiet Lake Creek ($20 Canadian or about $15 US per night) offered riverside camping, where we made quesadillas over a fireplace and fell asleep to the sound of a hooting owl while holding cans of bear spray.
city trip
After days of driving and camping and a superb reindeer hot dog from a gas station in Haines Junctionwe got here over White horsethe capital of the Yukon and the one major city on the highway to be on the list of 52 places to go to in 2024 as a Northern Lights tourism destination.
About the 350 hectares of forest nearby Yukon Wildlife Preservea three-mile trail that connected the habitats of 12 tundra species, including thinhorn sheep, arctic fox and Canada lynx (entrance fee $19).
Check in to the Raven Inn ($284), we explored Whitehorse’s pedestrian-friendly downtown and treated ourselves to dinner at Belly of bison (Bison Bolognese, $34). Afterwards our waitress directed us there the ’98 Hotel Lounge for “the real Whitehorse feeling”.
It was an open mic night within the bar, which was decorated with animal pelts and antique guns, and each time someone rang the bell above the bar to purchase the home a round of beer, there have been free mugs of Molson- Beer.
The MC encouraged hesitant talent by reminding the group, “There’s no tomorrow if you don’t live today.”
Yukon kitsch
The Alaska Highway is generally freed from roadside kitsch, with one extremely appealing exception: Signpost forest in Watson Lake, Yukon (free).
About 270 miles southeast of Whitehorse, a forest of poles is home to countless road signs posted by motorists since 1942, when a homesick American soldier named Carl K. Lindley put up an indication with the mileage to his hometown of Danville, Illinois.
Now license plates and tributes created from the whole lot from flip-flops to bathroom seats compete with the signage.
“We call it the largest public display of stolen property in North America,” Watson Lake Mayor Chris Irvin said in a telephone interview, estimating there are about 1,000,000 signs within the forest.
In British Columbia Springs and Safaris
We had spotted bears and moose in Alaska and the Yukon. But the wildlife in northern British Columbia, which we entered shortly after Sign Post Forest, felt like a safari.
We saw black bears coming out of the forest and infrequently stopped to look at grazing caribou or herds of Wood bison on the side of the highway. A family of thinhorn sheep licking salt from the road nearly collided with our vehicle, their hooves skidding across the asphalt.
Reassuring, our next stop, Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Parkoffered camping behind an electrical bear fence ($26 per night). Campers have full access to the springs, that are reached by a boardwalk – the unique was built by American forces in 1942 – over a warm-water swamp and boreal forest so unusual for growing species corresponding to orchids that it was originally called Tropical Valley.
With moss-covered banks, boulder bottoms, and temperatures starting from 108 to 126 degrees, the park’s natural pools were open 24 hours a day and we found solitude each at night stargazing and the following morning within the dawn mist.
Mile zero
The highway becomes flatter because it approaches its origin Dawson Creek, a town of 500 people in British Columbia that grew to about 10,000 virtually overnight when construction began on the highway. Black-and-white photos of soldiers working on the streets, sitting on a truck submerged in mud, and bathing in a river filled the no-frills hallways of our hotel George Dawson Inn ($174, including breakfast).
The highway is photographed so much Mile Zero marker Neighbors a former grain silo that has been restored Dawson Creek Art Gallery (free).
A group of photos, letters and tributes entitled “The Road” is on display within the gallery’s back stairwell. It included the next anecdote: When the indigenous people of northern Canada questioned the speed of road construction, they were told of Hitler’s plan for world domination, to which one replied, “What does he want all the land for?” He will certainly be like everyone else sooner or later die.”
Alberta’s Parks
From Mile Zero, the most direct route to the Lower 48 is into Alberta and passes two major attractions of the Canadian Rockies: Jasper National Park and neighboring Banff National Park.
Faced with rising mountains, vast river valleys, and herds of elk, we drove 280 miles, mostly on Highway 40, to Jasper National Park ($22 per family or group). The main road follows the glacial blue Athabasca River to the town of Jasper, where we checked in Hello Jasper Hostel ($306 for a four-bed private room).
We got up early and drove to the park faster than the tour buses Malignant Canyon peering into a river-carved abyss while following the river from a cliff path leading down with the river to rapids and pools.
It connects Jasper and Banff over approximately 145 miles Icefields Parkway offered spectacular views of waterfalls and peaks flashing in the clouds. We picnicked on the rocky banks of the Athabasca, ignoring the tourist developments Columbia Icefield Skywalkwhere admission starts at $41.
A double rainbow arched over Highway 93 as we entered Banff, the popular Canadian mountain town. We lived just outside the busy city center the Juniper Hotel ($317) and used the free shuttle service to take a ride downtown Three Bears Brewery and Restaurant ($8.95 pints) and top off on picnic supplies Wild flour bakery.
A quiet alternative
On a sunny morning, as Banff unfolded its appeal, framing mountain views seemingly on every trail, we backed off about 18 miles to get back on Highway 93, which curves southwest Kootenay National Park ($22 per family or group).
In Kootenay, we had Marble Canyon, a 200-foot-deep gorge with marble walls polished by a roaring river, to ourselves. Seven bridges allowed us to cross the narrow gorge Ruby Crown Kings sang from the pines.
We found Kootenay’s crowds Radium Hot Springs ($17.50). Surrounded by forested slopes, the large pool lacked the aura of hot springs in the wilderness, but with family-friendly shallows and a piercingly cold dip, it was a great change.
The small former lead, silver and zinc mining town is now an outdoor destination with three golf courses, a ski resort and over 60 miles of bike trails. Restaurants and breweries in the pedestrian zone included hourglass, serving cocktails, charcuterie and cheese platters (from $22). “We pack a lot into this small town,” said Breanna Fast, a co-owner.
Just over an hour from the border, Kimberley was a fitting end to a trip so full of sights that I never finished reading the novel I brought with me.
