[A brief note: We have been off the Alcan for over a week but without an internet connection. Alaska wild is Alaska WILD. More coming.]

The Alcan Highway connects Dawson Creek, British Columbia with Delta Junction, Alaska. It was constructed during WWII to allow troops and material to be transported to Alaska to combat a possible invasion by the Japanese. When it was completed, it was 1,700 miles long (It’s shorter now). Started March 9, 1942, the Alaska and Canadian Highway was completed October 28 the same year (That’s just seven months). It was considered the largest engineering/construction project since the Panama Canal. The US Army assigned more than 10,000 men to the project.

I first heard of the Alcan highway in the 60’s. My father often spoke of driving it. He never did. Of course, at that time it was a huge challenge, 1700 miles of mostly unpaved roads with service stations and supplies few and far between. Average speeds couldn’t have been more than 30-40 miles per hour. Cars and trucks were not nearly as dependable as they are now. So, for Dad driving the Alcan Highway was a huge BHAG (Big Harry Audacious Goal). With six kids to raise and a family to support he could never seriously consider making the trek. For him it remained a distant dream.

Anne and I have one remaining National Park in Alaska to visit, Wrangell-Saint Elias. We could have flown to Anchorage, rented a car, driven to McCarthy and visited the park. But somehow that didn’t seem right to me. I’m getting up in years and our visits to Alaska are probably numbered. This might be the last chance I have to pay homage to my father, Leland Mattice Knapp, and fulfill what he never had the time or resources to do. Drive to Alaska. The challenges aren’t as great now, the roads are paved (actually they are pretty good), fuel and services are easily available, the speeds are faster, but it is still a long way. And I could still see what my father would have seen. The scenery is still there, and animals still come out to graze or play by the roadside as you pass. So, this trip is for you dad, you would have loved it.


After our stays in Banff and Jasper, we headed north toward Dawson Creek and the true start of the Alcan. At first the forests seemed endless and empty, White and Black Spruce, Birch, Alder, Aspen, Pines, as far as the eye could see. But as we drove, we realized how many people were hard at work within them. The Alcan is timber country, and beneath the trees lie coal, oil, and natural gas. Intermixed in the forests were massive factories with huge piles of logs waiting to be formed into dimensional lumber, plywood and OSB. We passed a work camp that must have housed 1,000 workers and plants processing the petroleum so that it could be injected into pipelines for transport to refineries in the USA.

One cannot forget to mention the waters. Rushing streams, roaring rivers, glistening lakes are everywhere. Crystal clear, muddy, green with glacial silt, always beautiful. Dad’s Alcan dreams included fishing. I’ve dropped a line in as many of the waters as I could on this trip. I finally managed one small Artic Grayling in Moose Creek.



And the wildlife. While not as abundant as I had hoped (and expected), we have seen Elk, Deer, Arctic Fox, Porcupine, Stone Sheep, Moose, Woods Bison, Caribou, and more Black and Grizzly Bear. Given the time of year many had young. Watching the baby Bison playfully butting their hornless heads together as they scampered near their mothers was entrancing.


We didn’t stay on the Alcan the entire way but diverted to the Klondike Highway and headed further north to Dawson City and the remnants of the Klondike Gold rush. The city wasn’t much, but the gold rush story was fascinating.


To leave Dawson City, we waited in line for 2 ½ hours to catch a five-minute ferry ride across the Yukon River. (The ferry could only take one big RV across at a time and there were a lot of them in front of us.) But the wait was rewarded by the drive across the Top of the World Highway, the best dirt road I’ve ever driven on. It followed a high mountain ridge for 80 miles and for much of the ride you could look in both directions to steep drop-offs and distant vistas. There is nothing like it. We felt truly on the top of the world. The US/Canadian border crossing is at mile 65, literally in the middle of nowhere. A modern building in the middle of nowhere with a five mile stretch of pristine, new asphalt road before reverting to dirt for the remainder of the drive to Chicken Alaska.


Chicken, Alaska, instead of Delta Junction (the official terminus), was the end of the Alcan Highway for me. We’ve got weeks left touring around but we had driven to Alaska. Thanks for the dream Dad.