Few construction projects of the twentieth century match thebuilding of the Alaska Highway for drama, setting, and engineeringchallenge. From the authorization for highway constuction in February1942 until the completion of a pioneer road through the harsh northernlandscape, scarcely eight months passed. The struggle of “man andmachine against the wilderness” conducted under the pressure ofwar captured the imagination of the North American public. The annualflood of tourists along the “Route of '42” suggests thatthis sense of drama and fascination is still alive.
In recognition of the 40th anniversary of this epidsode inCanadian-American cooperation, a symposium was held at Fort St. John,one of several communities that were, and still are, profoundlyaffected by the building of the road. The papers presented at thisinterdisciplinary gathering of international scholars of the Canadianand American births illustrate the significance of the highway in suchdiverse spheres as Canadian-American relations, British Columbiapolitics, American military history, and the evolution of the northernsociety.
The first three papers in the book deal with the negotiation andplanning phases at the provincial and state levels in the 1920s and1930s and with the considerations that led American military plannersto push the road through as a wartime proejct. Surveying,building, maintaining, and operating the highway are the subjects ofthe following papers, while the next two deal with the postwaradministartion of the road by Canada.
The remaining papers discuss the impact of the highway onCanadian-United States wartime relations and on the economy and societyof the region – including its effects on the native populationand wildlife resources – and on the eclipse of Dawson City as theadministrative and economic centre of the Yukon Territory.
With much new information and insight, this book makes an originaland important contribution to twentieth-century Canadian history. Itwill be of interest not only to historians specializing in northernstudies but also to local history buffs who inhabit the regiontraversed by the highway.
