My family emigrated from Switzerland to the wilds of British Columbia in 1967. Up there, out in the bush, fifty miles north of the bend in the river where the Fraser makes its turn south, homesteading and logging in the sub-Boreal-Spruce forest, the Alaska Highway had a mythic draw. It was a symbol of the wild expanse extending northward, up to where the Aurora Borealis shimmered in the night sky. It captured our imagination like the Congo, the Zambezi, the Limpopo rivers captured Stanley's and Livingston's in the 19th century. It made it possible to jump in your truck and drive 2,000 miles due north, encountering nothing but mountains, rivers, lakes, endless forest, moose, bear, elk, beavers, loons, and fish.
World War II provided the impetus for construction of the road. The Army Corps of Engineers roughed in 1,500 miles of road and got it open in an astonishing seven months. Eighty-one civilian contractors followed close behind: 86 bridges, 25,000 men, 25 months; one legendary road.
Hat tip to Nick Cuccia.
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