Alcan highway revisited

[Alex Blair (RIP)]

Originally Posted by George McKenzie

I live about 100 miles from the hiway and heard alot of stories when it was built .In the winter there was one person killed a day ,mostly from trucks going off the hiway and rolling over .The military tires were nogood for the snow and ice .My friend in Whitehorse worked most of his life on the hiway and told me a story about the army sending a truck and trailer from White horse to Dawson Creek to get a load of peanuts .This truck was sent with top priority over all other vehicles and the van was sealed and not to be inspected . Needless to say the truck made the trip in record time .and the boys in Whitehorse got there peanuts .George

George..
While I was in Edmonton,back in '75...one of my civilian heavy equipment contractors(I was construction engineering..Mechanical systems)was telling me a s a young man he got his start on the highway..with an old truck..a small dozer and a trailer he lived in..anyway he told me of the cold and the fuel dumps along the highway and this one group of army war time draftees that were there to guard the fuel dump..It was on the top of the hill and the trucks used to refuel there..anyway as it started to get cold the troops started a fire in the bottom of the valley..and keep it going by rolling a barrel of gas down the hill into the fire every time they needed heat..he said they kept that whole valley on fire all winter long..the Troops were from the southern US and the cold was too tough on them..but what an expenditure of gas..and war time to boot..