The far north has always beckoned to adventurers.
It still does today.
In 1942, Northwestern Canada was an undisturbed wilderness, almost impenetrable in summer.
It was more easily traveled in winter when the rivers and lakes, marshes and bogs were frozen.
But in 1942, half a world away, a global war was expanding, exploding,
and these clouds of human activity would intrude and change this peaceful kingdom of Northern Canada.
Already, Hitler had attacked and invaded the sovereign nations of Eastern Europe.
In 1941, the Japanese attacked Hawaii.
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
With the threat of a Japanese invasion of Alaska, the U.S. and Canadian governments felt compelled to build an overland route to Alaska.
It would be built in the summer of 1942.
It would be a massive undertaking, the largest construction project since the building of the Panama Canal.
Over 11,000 men.
The thought of foreign soldiers on North American ground poured urgency into building the road.
It must get done no matter what.
In fact, American soil was invaded by the Japanese in 1942.
Even as the highway was being built, soldiers of Imperial Japan landed in Western Alaska.
It was decided the road would start at Dawson Creek in British Columbia
and travel north through the Yukon to Fairbanks, Alaska, 1,500 miles.
Over one-third of the troops were Afro-Americans, and they built one-third of the original military road.
Somehow, they adapted to the cold, the mud, and the insects.
Building a road in the north had other challenges.
The ground is permanently frozen.
When the top cover is removed, the permafrost thaws, creating a quagmire.
So three to four miles were carved out almost every day on top of the permafrost.
The machinery was kept rolling day and night during the summer,
but under those conditions it broke down constantly,
and repairs and getting parts took as much effort as building the road itself.
They attacked the wilderness on three separate fronts.
At Dawson Creek, work went north toward Fort St. John and Fort Nelson.
Supplies came from the Port of Skagway to Whitehorse,
and construction pushed north and south from this base.
A third contingent, supplied through Valdez, would connect the road further north
and also worked in both directions.
Through March, April, and May, the hungry jaws bit at the land.
Some rivers split a continent.
Major bridges had to be built, and the men worked tirelessly with little sleep or recreation.
A hundred and thirty-three bridges went into place, each a monument to energy and tenacity.
Mail call brought welcome news from home, but other news was alarming.
On June 3rd and 4th, Japan's northern fleet bombed the Aleutian Islands,
and three days later Japanese soldiers landed on the island of Kiska
and captured ten American sailors.
Like great dinosaur insects, they clawed their way over mountain and muskeg
through the summer and early fall.
The trucks had to keep moving.
They hauled, filled, graded, and pushed muskeg.
They found old foot trails that could be followed.
A winter trail from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson and a wagon road from Whitehorse to Kluwani Lake.
They sliced their way across a virgin territory where no road had penetrated,
following their noses when there wasn't much else to go on.
They did it in record time.
The 1,500-mile road had cost $135 million.
On October 20th, bulldozers closed the three sectors of the construction project at Beaver Creek,
eight months, 12 days from its beginning.
In November, a formal ceremony was held at Soldiers' Summit on Kluwani Lake in the Yukon Territory,
and the truck convoys immediately rolled toward Alaska.
Six months after the war ended, the highway was turned over to the Canadian government.
It immediately became a gateway to this great, pristine land, open to the public in 1949,
although some had already driven it by 1947.
And in the 1950s, it was still a genuine adventure.
After the authorities had given the proper inspection, you were free to move on when you could,
but you had better be self-contained, strong, and patient.
Delays were not just possibilities, they were certainties, and they could be long, perhaps days at a time.
But ingenuity and a cooperative spirit could keep things moving.
The original military road had been built too quickly.
It was thought of as temporary, and in the northern weather, that was proving to be true.
The road wasn't staying together.
You had two choices, either wait it out or turn back, and few wanted to turn back.
But for the next several years, much of it kept falling apart faster than it could be fixed.
The changes went on constantly, but when the repairs seemed too slow,
sometimes human ingenuity became the only thing you could rely on, along with some back-breaking toil.
With each season, Mother Nature seemed bent on destroying what the Canadian government and tourists seemed just as determined to keep.
Adventure dominated, and the urge to push ahead took hold, and these humans just didn't give up.
Just talking about how much better it is here than it was on the trap line.
But after we left the trap line, we went into a wash.
Rose Mould and her husband Tom were running trap lines in Canada in the 20s and 30s, long before there was a highway here.
They were genuine pioneers.
They live in Fort St. John today with their memories.
He had his hunting outfit.
He took Bob's mother and dad and Bob and Connie out in the mountains.
I went with him one year.
We had a wonderful time.
After the highway was built, Tom and Rose began outfitting and guiding big game hunts.
In the 50s and 60s, they guided hunters into the mountains around Munchal Lake.
Hunts could last three or more weeks, and it took a pack string of 20 horses to carry enough food for the trips.
Even then, they could run short of food if they had no success in hunting.
The horses were cantankerous, half wild, but absolutely necessary.
Many of the hunters were wealthy businessmen from the lower 48.
For most, it was the first time in such a wilderness.
Traveling into the highest country for stone sheep, grizzly bears, caribou, and moose.
Passing through storybook valleys.
It was a good country then, Tom says.
It lives in his memory today.
Today, mile marker zero at Dawson Creek is still the official beginning of the Alcan.
Dawson Creek is on the edge of British Columbia.
This quiet town of 7,000 still shows signs of the early 40s, when for two years the military and civilian engineers increased its population five times over.
Today, thousands pass through Dawson Creek on their own personal journey up the Alcan.
North from Dawson Creek, past rolling farmlands and prairies, past Fort St. John, into miles of thick forests of spruce, aspen, and pine.
The extensive forests here provide a pretty good living for some, cutting it down.
North of Fort St. John, the North Star Ventures logging operation is busy cutting trees this morning.
The harvested timber is going to be used for pulp and paper mills.
It is an important economic activity in this part of British Columbia, at least for these men.
North Star Ventures employs about 25 or 30 men.
Using a machine called a feller buncher, they cut about 120 trees an hour.
Manager Gary Reamer and his foreman keep a constant watch, and so does the Canadian government.
It maintains stringent requirements for the several logging operations here.
Making sure the reseeding of the harvested areas is carried out, to ensure a continuing supply of wood products for the future.
Even so, others have questioned the rapid and efficient removal of so much of the forest.
But it is an important way of life for many in this area.
Back on the road, others are heading north.
Porcupines are common along the Alcan.
They are protected in North America, but they don't know that.
Near Muncho Lake, the stone sheep are very common.
They are out almost every day, the young ones with their mothers,
and they are meeting the minerals in the soil in these rocky places called mineral lakes.
They climb easily on the steep slopes, incredibly tolerant of the cars passing by on the Alcan Highway above them.
In northern British Columbia, the seasons transition quickly.
A mountain looking over the road resembles an Indian profile, it is said, a likeness created by nature.
An early snow slows the pace of life for the red fox, and the last of the waterfowl leave for warmer weather.
The highway remains open.
When the highway was finished, winter was the best time to travel.
The ice and snow smoothed out all the dirt and mud.
Winter is still a good time to travel because the road is constantly maintained.
However, winter driving has its own special hazards.
A vehicle can be frozen in place for the rest of the season.
Sometimes, steam can be the only way to free it, although this is not usually necessary.
Steam is most often used to keep the culverts free of ice, while road crews constantly patrol for drivers in trouble.
Because in spite of all the warnings issued by the Canadian government,
each year there are unprepared drivers that freeze to death from the extreme cold in this isolation.
Even with the winter hazards, many drivers do use the highway throughout the winter,
and many facilities along the road remain open throughout the year.
Today, those facilities are found every 20 to 50 miles, like the Double G Lodge.
Jack Gunness operates the Double G near Muncho Lake with the help of his family.
Jack does a little of everything, pumps gas, repairs autos, serves meals, and rents rooms, no matter what the weather.
He operates the post office, the weather station, and a liquor store.
In summer, when traffic picks up at the Double G, Jack offers all the same services, plus a few extra.
In the warm weather, he adds tours of Muncho Lake for the visitors.
The lake is the heart of Muncho Lake Provincial Park in British Columbia.
On board, Jack fills the tour riders in on the particulars of the lake,
how it drains to mountain ranges, getting its bright blue and green water from the copper oxide leaching into it.
Muncho means big, deep lake, and it's over 400 feet deep in places.
Jack also tells them about the local history and about some of the wildlife that lives along the lake.
A few miles north, on the banks of the river, other wildlife are performing a strange little ritual.
Cliff swallows gather at mud holes. They fill their bills with as much mud as they can possibly hold,
then carry it back to cliffs to construct their nests.
Sometimes the nests are built under bridges, like this one at Leard River.
Leard Hot Springs is a provincial park and wildlife refuge, a great resting spot for weary travelers of all sorts.
Soldiers took baths in these natural springs of hot water back in 1942, and people have been doing it ever since.
It can be painfully hot close to the source. The water temperature can reach 125 degrees at that point.
But that temperature moderates in the marshes and wetlands, a haven for moose.
They find succulent water plants year-round, even when the air temperature drops to 70 degrees below zero.
The natives called this Paradise Valley, and it is a paradise indeed, with ferns and tropic-like plants sitting in the middle of the frozen winter.
But even in such a land, spring will return as rivers flood in the far.
And the beaver returns to work in the ponds along the highway.
At Watson Lake in the Yukon, there is also a forest industry, but it's the signpost forest that causes most people to stop.
Amarillo, Texas is just one of the thousands of signs left here by visitors from cities all over the United States.
It was all started back in 1942 by a homesick soldier named Carl Lindley, when he carved the name of his hometown on a wooden post.
Other soldiers began putting up the names of their hometowns, and the forest has just kept growing ever since.
Today there's well over 10,000 signs.
And these aren't the only signs along the Alaska Highway.
Some are whimsical, some unintentionally accurate, some simply descriptive.
Some can even be understood by those who don't read, and that's a good thing.
Some are not so friendly.
But others you should read and heed.
We push north into a desert, a desert in the midst of the Yukon. People here call it the world's smallest desert.
Sandy lake bottom material was left behind long ago by a glacial lake.
Strong winds make it difficult for vegetation to take hold.
The sand dunes constantly shift in the searching wind currents.
The winds can bring moisture charged air.
The world become enormous floating reservoirs containing thousands of tons of water, suspended in the air until they can hold it no longer.
The summer storms may wash out a roadway, or the road may hold.
But cliff faces can be weakened by a downpour. Canadian road crews will be out testing, probing for danger, removing it, keeping the road safe.
Getting stuck behind one of these road crews for a few hours is enough to remind us of the delays so common in the past, delays that happened all along the highway.
Autumn in the Yukon is spectacular and peaceful.
It may begin in August. With yellow aspen mile after mile, it creates a casual, relaxed feeling as the forest is transformed with new colors.
Now each day, the wild creatures are summoned by an inner voice to gather strength. They prepare to face the coming winter, teaching their young the skills of survival.
They must search for winter food to store up layers of fat.
Some prepare for arduous journeys to the south.
Feeding is the serious business of survival as summer leaves shine gold for a few weeks.
The summer creatures disappear.
Deserted meadows await the winter snow as summer fades away.
Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon territory, sits on the upper reaches of the Yukon River.
A boom town during the gold rush days, it holds about 20,000 people today.
More civilization than expected this far north. And that civilization gets a little uncivilized in mid-February at the Sourdough Rendezvous.
One popular event is flower packing. It commemorates the requirement of 1898 that each gold rusher had to have 2,000 pounds of supplies before they were allowed into Canada.
Today, men may pack loads up to 900 pounds in this contest.
People like to test their dogs and feats of strength as well.
At the one dog pull, the animal can't be touched while pulling the sled.
And more weight is added to each sled until one dog is the clear winner.
With only three minutes to get to his master, many dogs often pull over 1,000 pounds.
There are all sorts of other contests, some a little wild.
But long winter nights can inspire a little craziness come mid-February.
Finally, it's time for mushers to prepare for the Yukon Quest Dog Sled Race, over 200 miles longer than the famous Iditarod Race.
Because each musher is required to carry all the food and supplies for themselves and the dogs, it's such an arduous ordeal that the goal is to simply finish the race.
And it may take as long as a month to do it.
Only the dogs and their mushers, a distance of 1,200 miles on the frozen Yukon River.
The gold rush of 1897 brought the first large influx of white men into the Yukon.
They came first from Seattle to Skagway, Alaska by boat, carrying their supplies with them.
Then they had to cross over the Chilkoot Pass to get into Canada.
Each prospector was required to bring 2,000 pounds to the border before customs agents would allow them into Canada.
It was a white hell going up that pass, one prospector would recall.
Today, retracing that climb can create a sense of what it must have been like 100 years ago to carry one ton of materials up to the top.
But thousands did, making it all the way to Whitehorse and from there to the gold fields of Dawson City.
There, the gold seekers burrowed through the earth like ants.
In their fever to find gold, safety was of little concern.
Some strikes were rich and paid off, but most found little or no gold.
But they kept coming, uprooting the land.
The gold rush was so important to the Yukon that it's still alive today.
They're still mining gold here.
Back then, the miners took their gold to town, spending much of it in the bars of Dawson.
And the bars are still here too, like diamond toothed girdies.
They still entertain, but most of the customers are tourists.
Dawson is nestled in a crook of the Yukon River, remaining much like it was at the turn of the century.
And that has been by design.
The streets of this town are still unpaved, and it's easy to imagine that you're back in 1899.
Except, back then, instead of 1700, it was a city of 30,000 people living here, dreaming of making the big strike.
They came in search of their El Dorado, their city of gold. Some of them never left.
They remain here forever.
George Kerr is one of the hardy breed who lives here today and finds ways to earn a living.
When George first came to Dawson, fresh vegetables couldn't be found, so he began experimenting with growing his own.
He discovered, even this far north, he could raise broccoli, potatoes, sweet peas, and radishes.
So now he sells them in his own market, and they sell quickly.
Twenty-two hours of sunlight in the longest days of summer can produce some very large produce.
Others have grown 40-pound cabbages. He hasn't as yet. But what he grows, he enjoys while he can.
The growing season is short. The first frost is usually around the middle of August.
From then on, fresh veggies can be in short supply.
For centuries, all over the far north, men have trapped for furrows.
Some of their cabins remain, hidden in isolated places.
Sometimes it seems one can sense the very presence of their spirits.
Men are still trapping in the far north. Men like Wood Anderson.
Every 72 hours, Whit goes on his run to check the traps and his catch.
He runs three trap lines, each almost 50 miles long, and keeps careful records of his catches so that no line is over-trapped.
He gives each trap line a rest, from one to three years, when he finds the animal populations in that area are dropping.
Whit can even check the trap lines at night with the invaluable help of his dogs.
He doesn't have to know where the traps are located. The dogs know.
And when the dogs stop in the dark, all Whit has to do is turn on his light and check the trap.
He may have no idea where he is, and he doesn't need to. He trusts his dogs, and they will take him home.
He says no snow machine can do that.
Whit lives eight miles from the nearest road in a log cabin with his wife.
He finds it a happy, relatively stress-free life. It requires a lot of inner strength and resilience.
Many try it, but few can live this way.
Not far from Whit lives another family, a family of the most enduring wild animals of Canada, river otters.
They are so proficient at capturing the fish they live on, they have plenty of time left over just to play.
Something they have honed to a fine art. They seem impervious to the cold, playing games of search and exploration or sliding,
which is their favorite pastime, it seems.
During the summer months, enjoying the profusions of wild flowers offer Alcan tourists a favorite pastime.
Wild roses, along with purple-pink fireweed, grow along the highway.
And when the roses turn into rose hips in late summer, stopping to gather a bucketful can provide a good supply for making rose hip tea,
a healthy, tasty, and totally cost-free treat.
The highway is 100% paved now, but improvements and repairs are still part of the yearly ritual along the road.
The old 1942 road is constantly being straightened or widened.
Forty-eight miles of curbs have been removed since the original road was built.
But the earth beneath the road is a continually changing bed, and what seems solid shifts and thrusts in the seasonal changes.
So constant maintenance is needed.
Just off the road at Plukchu is a village of the Toshoni Indians of the Yukon.
For centuries, it's at Plukchu where they have prepared fish to use as one of the main staples of their lives.
Plukchu is their summer fishing camp. It has been for over 400 years.
The area around Plukchu has been used by the Toshoni for hunting and fishing for thousands of years.
Ancient ground and waters they revisit each fall to harvest the salmon that return to spawn.
Frank Moose, his sister Dorothy, and her children are part of this ancient fishing tradition,
the gathering and storage of food for winter survival.
And they respond to that ancient impulse today.
Hunting the same waters as the bear, they must keep a constant awareness of any movement in the nearby woods.
The boys learn early to handle the long wooden spears.
It takes practice to develop an experienced eye.
Prehistoric people survived the cold here only by being prepared.
Not easy. Even the bow and arrow was unknown to them.
So the gathering of fish in this way was vital.
The tradition of being prepared continues.
It's not merely an outing for this family.
The summer months of collecting and storing as much food as possible is not only part of their culture,
it's an important part of their economic survival in this country.
Not far from the highway this morning, men are struggling to form logs into new shapes here at the Yukon Alaska Log Works.
In this work yard, they've been creating a log house, working on it for six months.
And after the entire exterior of the house has been put together,
it's completely taken apart, log by log, and made ready for its final destination.
The entire house is trucked to the site selected by the owner several miles away.
Dennis Klein, the owner of Yukon Alaska Log Works, has been up all night overseeing the operation.
At seven in the morning, they begin the final assembly on the buyer's property.
The logs are the finest white spruce, an average 18 inches in diameter.
They themselves provide a superb insulation.
But there is also insulation placed in the groove between each log, a modern concession to energy efficiency.
The results of the materials and design make it a true home of the north.
The huge logs are pegged to hold them in place.
Dennis explains to John Broderson, the new owner, that each log is hand-fitted to the one below it.
The practice of constructing the house first, then taking it down and reconstructing it on the owner's property,
is used by log house builders throughout Canada and Alaska.
And many are much larger than this one.
With seven men on the crew, the house will go up in one day.
Tomorrow, the roof goes on, the windows go in, and the finishing is done.
And in the long summer days, they can count on almost 20 hours of light.
But it will still be sunset before they finish, midnight.
Even today, for the average tourist driving the Elkan,
leaving the highway, venturing off into new directions, one might find the going gets a little rough.
There are some remote locations that don't invite easy exploration, places that test attitudes about exploring.
Even in these places, you can find isolated trappers, miners, and ranchers,
men who like to get away from it all, well away, like rancher Bill Drury.
Although Bill's ranch is not extremely remote from the highway, he loves this Yukon territory for its isolation.
He says he gets along better with horses than people.
And he feeds those horses well, on oats and hay that are his main crops.
Bill is forced to irrigate his land because the mountains form a rain shadow here.
Even though it seems a lush northern landscape, rainfall is slight.
Haying time, harvest, comes quickly.
The summer days are long once for Bill and his crew, often 18 hours a day.
The hay is not a cash crop, it's used primarily to feed the horses of hunting guides and outfitters
that Bill will board throughout the winter months.
Bill's wife, Barbara, now fills her time tending four separate gardens, working as hard as her husband,
growing her vegetables, herbs, and roots.
The children will learn skills and attitudes, unique perhaps to this environment.
Attitudes about their relationships and responsibilities to each other.
Self-reliance pervades their daily life.
Along with growing most of their own food, they must provide their own electricity.
And they have created four separate systems to do it.
Being self-contained allows the children to become resourceful and confident,
exploring experiences that build even more self-confidence, a way of life foreign to most of us now.
When the workload becomes especially heavy, Barbara joins Bill and the other men, lending a helping hand,
a cooperative spirit and closeness perhaps made possible and nurtured simultaneously by the lifestyle they have chosen.
It's a lifestyle filled with beauty, but it is a lifestyle of hard physical work.
But they would be the first to tell you the rewards are deeply satisfying.
They wouldn't trade it for anything else they know.
To the west is Kluane National Park.
It sits in majestic silence, immutable isolation.
Rugged, remote, resplendent.
Mount Logan, Canada's highest mountain, is found here.
These are the most extensive non-polar ice fields in the world.
Locked up in these frozen ice fields and glaciers is more water than in all the Great Lakes put together.
The crevasses in these glaciers can hide buildings a hundred feet high.
The face of this glacier is over 300 feet high.
The Lowell Glacier is over 40 miles long.
Its glacial arms radiate out from the central ice field, and the shearing off of its face is called calving.
For some of this footage,
Fluwani National Park shares the Alaskan border with the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
on the United States side.
Together they form a world heritage site.
This is an area designated by the United Nations to be of global significance.
Fluwani provides protection for some of North America's finest populations of wildlife,
including perhaps the greatest diversity of birds in the North.
There are no major roads into Fluwani Park, but the Alkan Highway runs along the border
for a hundred miles, an opportunity for the adventurous to stop and spend some time.
Visitors can hike or camp in the wilderness park and perhaps discover the wildlife on
their own.
The wildlife most often associated with Fluwani are the Dall sheep.
Over 4,000 of these white sheep of the North stay up on the highest slopes, and early winter
is the season of rut.
Just the sight of these wild animals suffuses our being with a sense of wildness and freedom.
A sense of what the entire North American continent was like at one time.
We have tamed the wilderness, but in this process we have tamed ourselves.
So in this northwestern part of Canada, there is still a small portion of that wild freedom
that once typified this entire continent.
Robert Service was the poet of this North.
He lived here in the Yukon, writing about this country, writing about this land and
the people, writing about the cremation of San Magee and the spell of the Yukon.
His cabin is still here.
Today he is portrayed by actor Tom Burns.
Was it famine or scurvy?
I fought it.
Hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it.
Came out with a fortune last fall.
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it.
And somehow the gold isn't all.
No, there's the land.
Have you seen it?
It's the cussedest land that I know, from the big dizzy mountains that screen it to
the deep death-like valley below.
Some say God was tired when he made it.
Some say it's a good land to shun.
But there's some as would trade it for no land on earth.
And I'm one.
You come to get rich and good reason.
You feel like an exile at first.
You hate it like hell for a season.
And then you're worse than the worst.
There's a land where the mountains are nameless and the rivers all run God knows where.
There are valleys unpeopled and still.
There's a land, oh it beckons and beckons.
I want to go back and I will.
This land seems to draw us back as it does the waterfowl in spring.
The scop come to nest in the summer.
Sometimes their actions remind us of ourselves as these three males fight over the attention
of the female.
We're drawn to this land to experience it.
Some of us, willing to get out of our cars for a brief time, feel the press of our own
muscles against the trail.
The grandeur of the scenery seems to impress us more if we see it as the result of our
own physical efforts.
Sometimes, when it seems we are in a remote place, we can still find remnants of the original
1942 Alcan Highway.
This bridge was part of it then.
It seems to stand as a reminder of the wildness and remoteness of this place as it was.
The pull of the north still draws adventurers from around the world, Europeans or Asians
perhaps, coming to seek their adventure on this road to the Alaskan interior.
We're going to go where life is not featherbed safe, 1190 miles to the border of our 49th
state.
That common pull has drawn us to Alaska.
Even like the buffalo along the highway, they are not indigenous.
They were introduced, but they have been able to survive, even thrive.
Yes, we come by any means possible.
Across the border at Toke, Alaska, a forest fire can still hold up our progress for a
time, but not for long.
A good thing, the traffic behind us is building up.
These mountains of Alaska have their own timelessness as the endless summer days roll across them.
The summer night is never very dark, and now, doll sheep lambs display the vigor of the
wild flow of life that passes through them from generation to successive generation.
Our destination is still ahead of us as on through the night we drive, pushing to reach
Fairbanks.
Just as those men of 1942 must have pushed, anxious to reach their goal, 1500 miles to
Fairbanks, the end of the Alcan.
Fairbanks is the second largest city in Alaska.
It invites us to relax and reflect on our journey, perhaps.
A journey from the past to the present.
The adventure road to Alaska.
Driving great Alcan highway, from one end to the other.
Miles of splendor and adventure are like a vein of northern gold.
One time in the summer, let the arctic sun steal your slumber.
Again in winter, challenged by the frost and bitter cold.
Oh what a great highway, with its very few byways.
Just think you're heading northwest to the poles.
Don't wait too long to drive it, prove you can survive it.
You should go now before your dream grows to know.
Take the trip of your lifetime, celebrate the great northern lifeline.
The grand deed done under the spell of the midnight sun.
Oh what a great highway, with its very few byways.
Just think you're heading northwest to the poles.
Don't wait too long to drive it, prove you can survive it.
You should go now before your dream grows to know.