A Rocky Romance: Demythologizing the Alaska Highway

Seventy-six years ago the U.S. Army carved out the Alaska Highway.

Its construction was a transformative event for Yukon. It was the first land connection between the territory and the south, meaning people and supplies could be shipped to and through the territory.

Today, Yukoners and Canadians tell the heroic narrative of the highway, built in only eight months, with international cooperation, to help defend mainland North America from the threat of Japanese invasion.

At the time, the U.S. Army called it the greatest engineering feat since the construction of the Panama Canal. While this is true, it created a mystique of grandeur has stuck to the highway.

Travel literature beckons tourists with pictures of rugged peaks towering over little cars ambling down the weaving grey road. They talk of the, “Trail of ‘42”, soldiers carving out 2,700 kilometres of civility in the untamed wilds of the north.

However, highways and the connections and development they represent can also fuel destructive forces. For many Yukon First Nations, the highway brought disease, social and economic disruption, and provided ready access for federal Indian Agents to take children away to residential schools.

A settler, I was born and raised in (the) Yukon. For my first five years I lived in Old Crow, the land of the Vuntut Gwich’in, and the only fly-in community in the territory. Between the ages of 5 and 18, I lived in Whitehorse, and returned every summer during post-secondary schooling. I worked in museums, three of them, over six summers. As someone reasonably well versed in Yukon history, and a front-line tourism worker, I had only a vague idea of the destruction caused by the construction of the Alaska Highway.

This is my way of finding out how the prevailing narratives about the highway were shaped, why they’ve become so entrenched and what the implications of these narratives are for the people and the land left behind.

Navigating the story

No journey is experienced the same way. Two tourists will take completely different trips, though they drive the same road. With this in mind, navigate the sight as you choose. Pick your own way of reading this story.
 

“The road” is about what happened when the highway came through. “The people” will introduce you to a few characters who lived through that era. “The nature of stories” will explore the mythology surrounding the highway, and why it’s problematic.