Alaska Highway

Introduction
The Alaska Highway travels through some of the most pristine countryside in the Americas. Once a rugged dirt road few could travel - a road known to make military trucks disappear into deep mud - its 1,500-plus-mile route now is completely paved, frequently smooth, and open to anyone who wants to follow in the footsteps of the ever-hopeful gold rush prospectors, who wants to head as far north as the roads can go, toward spaces more wide open than most people can imagine.
The highway skirts lakes and rivers with water in shades of blue that defy description and with fishing where the reality surpasses the greatest lies told in the continental United States. It rounds the edge of the largest protected wilderness area in the world - the Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias park system - a place so remote many of its mountains remain unnamed, a park bigger than most of the New England states combined.
When you're on the highway, there is wildlife everywhere you look. Black bears, moose standing seven feet tall, Dall and stone sheep, mountain goats, and even grizzly bears are often within easy sight of the road - sometimes they're standing on the road. And then there are the smaller animals: beavers, foxes, martens, porcupines, the ubiquitous Arctic ground squirrel. Along the coast you'll see sea otters, once the source of Russia's greatest wealth, smash clams on their bellies. You'll see humpback whales breach, raising their bodies 30 feet into the air before crashing back into the sea. For birders, 424 species have been spotted in Alaska alone; British Columbia and the Yukon are both on major migratory flyways. You might spot bald eagles, Arctic terns, red-throated loons, trumpeter swans, wigeons, canvasbacks, and redhead and ring-necked ducks. Over 100 species of birds nest in the Tetlin Wildlife Refuge alone, right on the path of the highway.
The modern Alaska Highway is a trip without hardship. Towns are mostly tiny - some that look like big cities on the map are really little more than crossroads - but frequent enough to keep you supplied with all the necessities. Campsites are among the best in the world. There are no language problems along the highway, only two currencies, hassle-free borders, and people who are unfailingly friendly.
Traveling the highway is an adventure of peace, beauty, and nature. It's the greatest drive in the world. North to Alaska.
How This Book is Organized
This book is divided into three sections. Chapters 1-3 serve as an introduction to the North, including its history, geography, climate, and wildlife. This section also offers information on how to prepare yourself and your vehicle for the journey. The second part (Chapters 4 through 6) covers the approaches to the Alaska Highway, the highway itself, and the scenic alternate route north - the Cassiar Highway. In short, it gets you into the far North. Roads are described south to north, unless otherwise noted. Locations for the Alaska Highway are given by the old mile markers. Over the years, as the highway as been changed, these mile markers have ceased to be entirely accurate, although they are close to the actual distances. The old markers do, however, still exist, and they are the way businesses locate themselves.
The last section (Chapters 7-16) details the roads that lead off the Alaska Highway. These are presented in the order in which they appear if you're traveling the highway south to north. These roads are also described according to the direction in which they leave the Alcan (the Alaska Highway) - if the road heads south, we describe it north to south. If it leads north, we go south to north, describing it from the point it leaves the Alcan.
Who We Are, What We Do, & What You're in For
We've been writing these books for 15 years; over that time, we've been lucky enough to get to see and do just about everything in the state. This book brings you the places and things that we think you're going to love.
However, let's admit to a couple of biases right up front: you go to the North to see the wild, to be outside, to see the best that nature has to offer. You don't go up there to eat or sleep at the exact same places you can find at home. Chain stores, in all their many permutations, make for mediocre experiences. We believe that you get the best trip when you deal with the people who live, work, and make a place their home. If you're planning to spend your trip eating two meals a day at McDonald's, this book isn't for you.
We also believe the best travelers, the happiest travelers, are the ones who know what they're looking at. That's why we spend so much time on history and culture. It ain't just like it is back home.
And we hope it never is.
Chapter 1
The Land & Its Inhabitants
British Columbia
_ Geography
British Columbia is defined by the chains of mountains that line the land: to the north are the Cassiar and Omineca Mountains; to the southeast, the Columbia Mountains; to the west, the Coast Mountains; and to the east are the Rockies. These mountains divide the province into sections of plateaus and valleys, rich for agriculture and animal husbandry, while blocking off huge tracts that are left to wilderness.
The Coast Mountains separate the rainforests of the coast with the drier Interior; farther north, the Fairweather Range includes the highest point in British Columbia, Mt. Fairweather - you can see it from 50 miles off, and it still looks huge.
At the far side of the province are the Rockies, dropping down to parallel the Alaska Highway, and then moving over towards the next province, Alberta, and one of the great park systems of the world: Jasper, Banff, Kootenay, and Yoho, which together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The rivers of the province are no less impressive than the mountains. The largest of them, the Fraser, is 850 miles long and is fed by the Nechako, Quesnel, Chilcotin, and Thompson rivers. The Kootenay flows down to the Columbia River in Washington state, and westward to the Pacific, weaving a tortuous path between mountain ranges. More than a quarter of a billion birds stop along the Stikine - the fastest free-flowing river left on the continent - during the height of the migration season.
If all that wasn't enough, British Columbia has a long chain of islands, including Vancouver Island, the biggest on the west coast - almost the size of England, in fact. There are the delightful little Gulf Islands - Salt Spring issues its own currency - and farther north, the islands of BC mesh with those of Alaska, forming the Inside Passage. Princess Royale Island has kermodie bears, a rare subspecies of black bear - kermodies are white. Off the beaten track are the Queen Charlottes - home to some of the richest First Nations culture in Canada.
Along the coast, there is the single greatest glory of the north, the Western red cedar (Thuja plicata). Its cones are oval, unlike the round yellow cedar cones. The Western red cedar was the department store for First Nations people. These trees can live over a thousand years. They rot from the inside, so a perfectly healthy tree may have a hollow that's 10 or 15 feet across and 30 feet high. They also provide a base for other forest growth: the biggest might have more than 50 plant species growing on them. You can't understand coastal life until you've taken a good look at these giants.
When William H. Seward bought Alaska from the Russians, his grand plan was actually to use it as leverage to allow the United States to annex British Columbia. The man knew a good thing when he saw it.
_ History
The land that is now British Columbia was first brought to European attention by Juan Perez in 1774; Captain Cook was the first European to land in the area, near Vancouver Island, in 1778, and he was quickly followed by George Vancouver. But the early explorers weren't really interested in British Columbia itself. They were actually just out there after a Northwest Passage.
So what finally got people interested in the territory? Fur hats. Plain and simple. Europe needed beavers to make felt for hats, and Canada had a lot of beavers. Prices were ridiculously high, and so traders and voyageurs headed into the Interior, looking for fur sources.
From the official standpoint, it was Alexander Mackenzie who opened the territory, when his 1793 expedition reached the Pacific Coast by land - a decade before Lewis and Clark ever turned their sights west. Mackenzie was not only the first to cross the continent, he was one of the greatest explorers the North has ever seen; after dipping his toes in the Pacific Ocean, he headed north, following what is now the Mackenzie River system to the Great Slave Lake and eventually to the coast of the Arctic Ocean. He wasn't really looking for what he found; he kept hearing stories about a big river to the west (the Yukon, no doubt), but while not finding it, he created the foundations for Canada's western provinces, mapping endless stretches of land that even today few venture into.
Where explorers first trod, tradesmen soon followed. After Mackenzie opened the West, Simon Fraser and George Thompson - names common to Canada's landscape today - followed in his footsteps, taking the trade out of the disorganized hands of the independent trader, and opening a series of fur-trading posts for the Northwest Company, which was later absorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company. The HBC, expanding as quickly as it could, sent men out to solidify its hold on trade and to fend off territorial encroachment by a variety of upstart fur traders.
The first whites to settle permanently in British Columbia were a ragged group of hunters and trappers, who either lived with the Natives (the term currently in use through much of Canada is First Nation peoples) or took advantage of them, seeking their fortune in furs.
From this beginning grew the modern province of British Columbia.
Actually, in the beginning, it looked like there were going to be three provinces, or at least three territories. The islands, including Vancouver Island, were not incorporated into the larger area until the middle of the 1800s. The Stikine River was also an independent administrative district, left to its own devices until the influx of gold miners made some kind of central control necessary.
Date modern BC to the territory joining the Dominion of Canada in 1871, and to the first railroad in the province, which joined BC to points east in 1875.
BC today is the best of Canada. More landscape, more scenery, plenty of open spaces. BC has found its niche in a diverse economy and vast natural beauty.