I Forged the First Link

in the Alaska Highway

The Author Hunted Moose with the Beaver Indians in 1911, Along the Trail

that Is Now the Alaska Highway, and Was Sent by the Hudson Bay Co. in

1925 to Open up the Road Referred to in the Story, and for Two Years Travelled
Between Fort St. John and Fort Nelson by Canoe, Sled and Pack-train.

I LITTLE thought when I blazed that pion-
eer Hudson’s Bay road from Fort St. John,
on the banks of the swift-flowing Peace,
three hundred miles through the wilderness
to Fort Nelson, lonely fur post in the heart
of the B. C. forests, that within a decade and
a half the hand of Mars would convert it
into the first link in the 1200-mile Canada-
Alaska International Defence Highway, and
that American doughboys and U. S$. Army
engineers would be camped on my old
stamping grounds.

It was back
in °25, before
the north be
came air con-
scious, when
sled and scow
and pack - train

were still the
time-worn
means of travel,
that I blazed
that road. Al-
aska seemed a
long way off in
those days, and

Hitler —a lud-

icrous, postur-

ing figure with
ae Canvas

Chaplin mous-
rache—didn’t seem destined to set the world
iuflame with his beer hall eloquence.

Now Alaska’s thirty million-dollar back
Joor “Burma Road” is being slashed through
hese forests by American army engineers.
And on March 18, President Roosevelt and
Prime Minister Mackenzie King affixed
heir signatures to an historic document that
will spell the death knell to the Northwest's
solation and open a backdoor highway by
which American doughboys, guns, tanks,
nunitions and war supplies can be whirled
yy motorized transport to the heart of
wakening Alaska to be used, perhaps, in
in offensive launched across the Aleutian
slands bridge against Tokio.

The author.

THE ALASKA HIGHWAY
The vision of Donald MacDonald, of
‘airbanks, Alaska, sponsor of this defence
ighway, who warned, two’ years ago, that
here was only one cannon to protect Alas-

SUMMER EDITION

ka’s 15,000 miles of undefended coastline
an old Russion cannon being used asa flower
pot on the government lawn at Juneau—
is about to become an accomplished fact.

- Only, instead of following the route selected

by Donald MacDonald and the Alaska
Highway Commission, paralleling the Pa-
cific Coast 150 or 300 miles inland—where
it might be vulnerable to enemy attack—
the 24-foot crushed rock highway will fol-
low the pioneer Hudson’s Bay road I blazed
from Fort St. John to Fort Nelson in the
hunting grounds of Chief Bellyfull’s Sick-
annie tribesmen, thence north via the new
defence airport at Watson Lake to White-
horse, in the Yukon, and on to Fairbanks.

Already trainloads of khaki-clad Ameri-
can construction troops have reached the
end of steel at Dawson Creek, just inside
the B. C.-Alberta boundary. Already acres
of army tents have mushroomed on all sides,
with lunch counters and construction shacks,
while another army of doughboys has estab-
lished a second base at Fort St. John, 60
miles to the northward. And truckloads of
American doughboys and army engineers
have been hurtled by ten-wheeled motor

By
PHILIP H. GODSELL

F.R.G.S.

Fur Trader, Arctic Traveller and former
Inspecting Officer for the Hudson's Bay
Company.

Author of: Arctic Trader,
The Vanishing Frontier,
They Got Their Man,
Etc., etc.

trucks in 27 hours to Fort Nelson, 300 miles
to the northward over a road that took me
three weeks to negotiate by pack-train back
inn 25s

This isn’t, however, the first time Ameri-
cans have played their part in the history of
this century-and-a-half-old trading post of
Fort St. John, the first trading post to be
established in British Columbia. Known as
Rocky Mountain Fort*, it was first reared
from the virgin wilderness in 1798 by Simon
Fraser, burly fur trader-explorer of New
York State, and discoverer of the Fraser
River. Established first near Taylor’s Flats,

*Rocky Mountain Fort, forerunner of Fort
St. John, was erected following an exploration
journey by Finlay in 1797 and was situated at
the mouth of the South Pine where Simon
Fraser was in charge. Later, in 1805, another
Recky Mountain Fort (Cust’s House) was built
by Simon Fraser at the western end of Rocky
Mountain Portage beyond Hudson’s Hope and
the original fort moved downstream to the mouth
of the North Pine. The latter fort became
known as Fort D’Epinette, or The Pine Fort, by
which Fort St. John is still known to the Crees
under the name of Minahag-o-waskihagan. Pouce
Coupe is named after the old chief (Pouce
Coupe) mentioned herein.—P.H.G.

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F
»

Astae cl See Qi al

Fort St. John, century-and-a-half-old trading post, former headquarters for the writer and now base

for American road construction army.

Page Eleven

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