July 13, 2025 - Driving from Alaska to Maryland
Toad Creek to Fort Nelson to Dawson Creek

Mostly a travel day today.  About two and a half hours to Fort Nelson where we'd do a little sightseeing, then another five hours to Dawson Creek, where the Alaska Highway begins.

It was a pretty day when we left Toad River Lodge, heading due east.
   
But then it started getting smoking.  As you recall, originally our plan was to take the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson to Watson Lake, but we couldn't because the Alaska Highway was closed due to wildfires west of Fort Nelson.  We took the Cassiar Highway instead.  That was about three weeks ago.  Now we were headed towards Fort Nelson and I guess there was still some wildfire activity, but not enough to close the Alaska Highway.
   
The smoke getting worse.
   
And worse.
   
Until finally it was practically nnstrument meteorological conditions (IMC), as we say in the aviation community.
   
But, by the time we arrived in Fort Nelson, the smoke had cleared up.  Our first stop was at the Triple G Hideaway RV Park for breakfast at their restaurant.
   
The restaurant (and saloon).
   
A friendly grizzly bear greets us.  We had a nice breakfast here.
   
Next door to the Triple G was the Fort Nelson Heritage Museum.
   
The museum was mainly a collection of artifacts, both inside and out.  Quite a collection, actually.
   
Most of the artifacts were housed in this large log cabin.
   
Where else would you see a collection of outboard motors?
   
Interesting to see where all the visitors come from.
   
Fox, beaver, coyote, wolverine?
   
Griz!
   
Royal Canadian Mountie wearing the famous scarlet Norfolk jacket alongside Indigenous Woman.
   
A ferocious cougar about to leap!
   
Model railroad layout.
   
An old juke box.
   
Prison cell.  Not a place you want to be.
   
Collection of old open-ended wrenches, sockets and oil cans.
   
Aerial picture of Fort Nelson, looking west with the Musckwa River at top.  The Alaska Highway runs right through the middle of town.
   
Old Kodak cameras, film and movie cameras.  All replaced by Steve Jobs' Smartphone.
   
In 1943, an electrician named Earl Bartlett came to Fort Nelson and began working as a repairman for the Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers.  He travelled the Alaskan Highway for 36 years, and since his hobby was photography, he took pictures.  At some point he realized his photographs had value and he began selling them as postcards.  At the age of 79 he had sold over a million postcards!  Here are a few.
   
 
   
In the early days, the Alaska Highway was not paved; it was a gravel road.
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
We watched a video on the building of the Alaska Highway.
   
Canadian newspaper on September 11, 1939.  Germany had invaded Poland on September 1.  The Soviet Union would invade Poland on September 17.
   
Lynnette was fascinated with the chainsaw and handsaw collection.
   

Outside lay a giant crankshaft; a component of a Cooper - Bessemer Engine, used to drive generators for Fort Nelson's power. Some of pistons for the same engine are to the right of the crankshaft.

The crankshaft 111,722 hours before failing; about 12.8 years of continuous running.  It is 22 feet 11 inches long and weights 7.5 tons.  Each piston weighs 450 pounds.
   
In a separate building was the car collection.
 
Front and center was Earl Bartlett's -- the postcard photographer -- Red and White 1957 Chevy Bel-Air.
   
The cars were packed in tight.
   
A 1908 McLaughlin Buick that drove from Fort Nelson to Whitehorse and back when the car was 100 years old.  Well done!
   
Nice hood ornament!
   
A 1909 Brush Runabout that participated in the 50th Anniversary of the Alaska Highway (1992).
   
An old school bus that will never hear the shouts and laughter of little kids again.
   
This old car sits forlornly outside.  At least its a nice day.  The car is probably filled with snow during the winter.
   
Another building contained the "high-tech" stuff:  electric typewriter, switchboard, teletype machines,  etc.
   
This was Earl Bartlett's house, moved to this location in 1988 (with some more postcards on the window).
   
A cache perched up high.
   
An old toolshop.
   

Remember that huge crankshaft we saw?  This is the engine it goes to.  The 3000 kilowatt Cooper - Bessemer Engine produces 4,210 horsepower at 327 RPM.  It has 16 cylinders, each with a 15 1/2" bore.

In 1957, the new engine was installed at Quesnel, BC.   It was moved to Chetwynd, BC in 1963.  It was moved to Fort Nelson in 1969.  At some point BC Hydro donated the engine to the museum.
   
The front of the engine.
   
An old radial engine, still swing a three-bladed prop, albeit a little bent.
   
The Northwest Staging Route was a series of airstrips, airport and radio ranging stations operating in Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska during World War II.   Fort Nelson was one of the major airports on the route.
 
I bypassed Fort Nelson on my Alaska flight last year so I wanted to see the airport, which is called Northern Rockies Regional Airport.  It is about five miles northeast of town.
   
Next to the airport terminal was the NavCanada Flight Service Station, pictured here.
   
This is a good sized airport, with two intersecting runways.  Here a Kingair taxiis out.
   

RV sighting!

There was no FBO or airport restaurant.  I think the terminal was closed.  The chain link fence topped with barbed wire was kind of unfriendly, so we just did a drive-by and drove back to town.
   
Soon we were back on the Alaska Highway, crossing the Muskwa River, heading south to Dawson Creek, about five hours away.
   
We were no longer in the mountains.
   
Driving south on flat land.
   
You can barely see it, but there's a airstrp on the other side of those buses.  It's one of the emergency landing strips built as part of the Northwest Staging Route.
   

We passed by Fort St. Johns which looked like a nice town.  Hindsight being 20/20, I wished I had made motel reservataions there instead of Dawson Creek again.

A few miles past Fort St. Johns we came to the Peace River Bridge.
   

This bridge has an interesting history.

"In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as they approached the Peace River in British Columbia motorists on the Alaska Highway would be stunned to see the soaring towers of the original Peace River Bridge. One of two suspension bridges built on the British Columbia section of the highway, the Peace River Bridge, near the town of Taylor, was praised as one of “the great bridges of the Dominion of Canada.” It was constructed by a famous American bridge building company, John A. Roebling’s Sons Company, under contract to the US Public Roads Administration (PRA). The company also built the Brooklyn Bridge and the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, among many others.

When it opened in 1943 after only nine months of construction, it was the longest bridge on the Alaska Highway, measuring 647 m (2,130 feet) long. One of the highway’s six “special crossings,” it was built to last decades. However, nature, in the form of a landslide, proved to be an unbeatable force. In 1957, 14 years after it opened, this magnificent structure collapsed – its north abutment falling over in the landslide, snapping its steel cabling and smashing the roadbed into pieces.

The collapse caused long-lasting economic and social disruption for the areas serviced by the Alaska Highway. A car/truck ferry dealt with backed up traffic until the Pacific Great Eastern Railway gave permission to convert its rail bridge into a one-lane vehicular bridge. This stopgap measure was used during the two years it took to build a replacement. The new bridge, opened in 1960, still stands today.

The Lower Liard River Bridge -- which we crossed -- is now the only suspension bridge remaining on the Alaska Highway in British Columbia."
   
Looking east out ove the Pease River.  From the comments on Google Maps, it seems like everyone wants a new, four-lane bridge.
   
About seven miles down the highway, prior to crossing the Kiskatinaw River, we turned off onto what used to be the Old Alaska Highway.  It was taking us to one of the few remaining original Alaska Highway bridges.
   
Getting close.
   
Our first glimpse of the bridge.
   

Construction of the Historic Kiskatinaw Bridge began in late 1942 by Don Construction, a Toronto-based company under a contract with the PRA. It was one of 133 permanent bridges constructed by the PRA to replace the temporary crossings used by the US Army to build the pioneer road.

This three-span timber truss bridge has an amazing nine-degree curve – a curve that PRA engineers designed to accommodate the highway’s steep change in grade on the west end and the need to land at a notch in the cliff on the east end. At the time, it was the first wooden curved bridge to be built in Canada.
   
P69
   
The Historic Kiskatinaw Bridge with the original pioneer bridge still standing in the foreground (c 1942)
   
Building the historic Kiskatinaw Bridge.
   
In addition to the challenge of building a significant curve into a wooden bridge, the PRA had to contend with assembling masses of materials, shipping delays, floods, and unusual temperatures – all of which extended the construction time to nine months. About 500,000 board feet of creosoted British Columbia fir had to be shipped from the coast and gravel had to be hauled 16 km in from a Peace River crushing plant. An unseasonal cold snap halted the curing of the cement poured to create the bridge’s pedestals and piers, which meant the construction crew had to prevent the curing concrete from freezing. They did this by enclosing the concrete and keeping it to a temperature of 22°C (72°F) for 10 days. This was extremely difficult given that the work involved almost 610 cubic m (800 cubic yards) of concrete.
   
P71
   
P72
   
Development of the oil and gas industry in the post war years resulted in the need for a new bridge to handle wider and heavier loads; as a result, the Alaska Highway was rerouted in 1978, bypassing approximately 10 km of the old highway and the historic bridge.
   
P74
   
P75
   
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An aerial picture from my 2024 Alaskan flight of the newer bridge crossing the Kiskatinaw River.  I noted it at the time since it was such an unusual bridge.
   
And then we arrived at Dawson Creek, where we would spend the night.  Our motel -- different from last time -- was right on the main street/highway and wasn't any better.  I will say the motel was inexpensive and included a free breakfast at the restaurant next door which was very good.
   
 
   
 
   
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