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The dream of an overland route to Alaska was thought of long before the Second World War. A veteran American railroad builder, F.H. Harriman, proposed a Canada-Alaska railroad linked with a Russian railroad by bridging or tunneling the Bering Straits. However, after Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, she pressured Russia into abondoning the idea.

In 1905, Major Constantine of the North West Mounted Police was ordered to blaze an overland trail to the Klondike gold fields. He started from Fort St. John and got to the Stikine River before he was ordered back. He had built 375 miles of road.

Donald MacDonald, a United States government engineer, proposed an overland road to Alaska in 1928. His thoughts were to link Alaska with Panama. This route could be used for military purposes but the country was not interested in military considerations at that time.

In 1933 the United States Congress authorized President Roosevelt to set up a joint commission with Canada to study a proposed road to Alaska. There was no action by this commission by 1938 other than to name new members.

Several routes had been proposed for the road before and after contruction was authorized.

The American were proponents of Route A which started in central British Columbia at Prince George, then moved northweest to Hazelton, up the Stikine River to Altin to Teslin and Tabish lakes, to Whitehorse and Fairbanks via the Tanana Balley. The route would connect Alaska and Seattle and parallel the west coast for 150 miles but it was vulnerable to possible enemy attack from the sea, had steep grades and heavy snowfall and there were no air base along the way.

The Canadians favored Route B which also started at Prince George but which followed the Rocky Mountain Trench up the valleys of the Parsnip and Finlay rivers to Finlay Forks and Syton Pass, then north to Francis Lake in the Yukon to the Pelly River. From there it went to Dawson City and down the Yukon Valley to connect the Richardson Highway to Fairbanks. The addvantage of this route was that it was farther inland-away from enemy planes, but again there were no connecting air bases. Also Whitehorse, the most important town in the Yukon, was bypassed. Construction cost was estimated at $25 million with a time factor of five to six years.

Vihjalmur Stefansson, the pioneer Arctic explorer, had proposed a Mackenzie River route from Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories up the Mackenzie River, across the Yukon to Eagle, Alaska and Fairbanks. This route was impractical from its inception due to the remoteness of the area.

As it turned out the so-called Prairie Route (Route C), advocated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, was the only practical one. It was far enough inland to avoid attack by enemy planes from the sea and it connected the vital air bases of the Northwest Staging Route from Edmonton to Fairbanks. It traversed through more level terrain, not ascending a pass over 4,250 feet. There was alson a railhead at Dawson Creek, British Columbia and a winter trail from there to Fort Nelson, 300 miles to the northwest. Another access point was through Skagway, Alaska.

The road, when completed, traversed over 1400 miles from Dawson Creek to its junction with the Richardson Highway at Delta Junction, Alaska.

The highway began in the small town of Dawson Creek, then populated by approximately 600 people.  On March 9, 1942 the first train carrying troops arrived at the town.In a matter of weeks the town's population boomed to over 10,000. More than 11,000 American troop (including seven regiments of engineers, three of them with men of African American heritage), 16,000 civilian workmen and 7,000 pieces of equipment were thrown into the herculean task of penetrating a vast untamed wilderness. The construction bill for the 1,523 mile route was about $140 million and it included 133 major bridges and more than 8,000 culverts which, if placed end to end, would stretch over 57 miles. Then a cold, bleak November 20th, 1942, a little less than nine months after construction began, 250 shivering soldiers, civilians, and RCMP watched as officials from the United States and Canada cut the ribbon to officially open this major road link. The ceremony took place at Mile 1061, known as "Soldiers Summit" and it crowned an event that has gone down in history as one of the construction triumphs of the world.

Since then, the Alaska Highway has developed into one of the most important transportation arteries in North America, stretching from Mile "0" at Dawson Creek, British Columbia through the Yukon Territory and into Alaska at Fairbanks. Jurisdiction of the Canadian section of the highway was turned over to the Canadian Army in 1946 and all reconstruction and upgrading was carried out under Canadian Army supervision until April 1, 1964 when the Federal Department of Public Works took it over. On April 1, 1971 the maintenance of the Yukon section on the Alaska Highway was turned over to the Yukon Department of Highways and Public Works by the Federal Government. Ever since the Alaska Highway was completed in the 1940's a continual program of upgrading, widening and staightening has been underway.  Approximately 90 percent of the Alaska Highway is now paved. The Alaska Highway, once an emergency wartime road, has developed into a vital link between the giant industrial regions of the U.S. and Canada and the natural resources of the Alaska and Yukon. But aside from the economic aspects of the highway, it also represents a permanent monument to the durable and warm friendship between two great nations.