maintenance, such as grading, repairing bridges and fixing the roadway after washouts, by the Northwest Highway Maintenance Establishment, which worked under the direction of the RCE.
When the US Army constructed the pioneer road, it also installed a long-distance pole-line communication system along the highway, but no power lines were added. This decision would have a big impact on highway lodges, as it would force them to rely on generators for power, and the cost of fuel would influence all pricing, from a cup of coffee to the price of a room. After World War II, Canadian National Telecommunications camps were established at the repeater stations to maintain the communications network along the highway. These camps, such as the one at Summit, British Columbia, became small communities consisting of their staff, the highway crews and their families.
Once initial construction of the highway was completed and the US Army moved out of the North, surveyors, heavy-equipment operators and mechanics were still needed, as were administrators, who were necessary to control the immense task of managing maintenance and care of the highway. This demand led to an increase in the number of women working along the highway, who during the construction phase had held only one of every twenty-four jobs, mostly in administrative support and service positions. This “one in twenty-four” number comes from a website created jointly by Yukon Tourism and Culture, Archives Canada and Canadian Heritage, called The Alaska Highway: A Yukon Perspective.
The First Lodges
Until the construction of the Alaska Highway, trains and riverboats were the primary modes of transportation in the Yukon and Alaska. There was a railway line from Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon, and the Alaska Railroad owned several shorter railway lines that were eventually linked up. The White Pass and Yukon Route (WPYR) had a monopoly over the rail and river transportation from Skagway, Alaska, into the mineral-rich Yukon Territory. After the road was built, WPYR’s subsidiary, the British Yukon Navigation Company (BYNC), provided bus services between Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and Scottie Creek, Alaska. Over the years, this bus company built several lodges to accommodate its passengers: Fort Nelson Hotel and a lodge in Lower Post, both in British Columbia, and Dry Creek Lodge and Koidern Lodge in the Yukon Territory. An interpretive panel commemorating Mile 710 Rancheria Lodge as the first BYNC lodge construction to open on the highway between Watson Lake and Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1946, describes the variation of early accommodations: “Hastily converted army barrack buildings, stout two-story log structures and a framed wall tent for serving lunches.”
In the 1950s Lum ’n’ Abner’s was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Boyes.
Yukon Archives, Rolf and Margaret Hougen fonds, 2010/91, #1024. Photo by Rolf Hougen, 1946.
But even with transportation services in place and burgeoning infrastructure, the promise of allowing tourists free rein over the length of the former military highway didn’t come to fruition. Travellers still needed a permit and had to prove that they had necessary supplies for the journey. Then with the opening of the highway to public traffic in 1948, more lodges sprouted up to provide meals, services and accommodations to people working on and travelling along the highway.
Since the highway opened to the public, lodges have opened and closed, such as Mile 233 Lum ’n’ Abner’s and Mile 1095 Joe’s Airport, or lodges have opened, closed and then reopened, such as Mile 836.5 Johnson’s Crossing and Mile 1147 Pine Valley Lodge. The businesses were built for the convenience of highway travellers and sold or abandoned by their owners when times got tough or it was simply time to move on. According to The Milepost, in 1955, services were available every 25 miles. The 2016 edition, meanwhile, advised travellers to watch the fuel gauge, as services were found at times only every 100 to 150 miles.
Mile 717.5 Message Post Lodge was open until the late 1980s and according to The Milepost, the lodge offered “food, gas, a beer garden and souvenirs.”
A World of Visitors
By the time the Alaska Highway opened to the public, people were chomping at the bit to drive this road and explore the northwest reaches of North America. The Alaska Highway Heritage Project website notes that in 1948 tourists driving the highway numbered 18,600, and a mere three years later that number jumped to 50,000. The recent number, from Yukon Tourism border crossing statistics for 2015, may come as a surprise: 327,778. There’s no denying the attraction of driving the fabled road.
Back in the summer of 1943, when travel on the highway was only allowed for military purposes and residents, Mrs. Gertrude Tremblay Baskine from Toronto, Ontario, arrived in the Canadian commissioner’s office in Edmonton, Alberta, determined to acquire an Alaska Military Highway Permit. The permit was an elusive and mysterious piece of paper that would give Gertrude access to the ALCAN from Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to the end, at Mile 1,422 in Big Delta, Alaska. Why did she want to travel the highway? Her reason was simple: “It was impossible, naturally I had to try it.”
Previous images: The Alaska Military Highway was officially opened in November 1942. Though bus service was provided to military personnel and contractors throughout the 1940s, the highway was only opened to the public in 1948. Liard Lodge (pictured) was one of the first lodges constructed to accommodate bus traffic.
Yukon Archives, Rolf and Margaret Hougen fonds, 2010/91, (top) #463, (bottom) #1032. Photos by Rolf Hougen, 1946.
By this time in her career, Gertrude had achieved a number of things she’d set her mind to: she had a degree in social work from McGill University and a master’s from Columbia University, and was a graduate in letters from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She had worked as a social worker and a journalist. And in 1943, as a member of the Association of Canadian Clubs, she was travelling across Canada lecturing on the importance of women becoming involved in politics.
In her travel memoir Hitch-Hiking the Alaska Highway, Gertrude briefly mentions that Mr. Baskine fully supported her work (which turned out to be adventurous), but it’s also reasonable to guess that she was well placed in higher society by birth and/or by marriage (most likely both), and had access to influential people and the necessary funds to finance her journey. Travel in the North has always been expensive, and was even more so in the 1940s. To get her Alaska Military Highway Permit, Gertrude had to prove that she would not be a financial burden to the US Army.
Memorabilia from the Alaska Highway construction days can be found at lodges, RV parks and in peoples’ backyards from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska.
In the summer of 1943, travel on the Alaska Highway was tightly controlled by the US Army, travel permits were inspected at military checkpoints, and only approved vehicles and people could travel the highway. It was seen as a virtually impossible act for a woman to travel the Alaska Military Highway—let alone on her own. (In fact, just after Gertrude left Dawson Creek, she heard that the army was going to ban women from travelling on the highway. So she put as much distance between herself and Dawson Creek as she could, as fast as she could.) But somehow, Gertrude left Edmonton with her permit in hand and set off to become the first and only woman to hitchhike the full length of the infamous roadway before it was opened to the public in 1948.
One year after her great adventure, Gertrude’s memoir was published. The word “hitchhiking” is a bit misleading: Gertrude was courteously
