Colonel Hoge, William Hoge, of the United States Army Corps of Engineers stepped onto the platform of the Dawson Creek railroad station seventy-eight years ago this past February. In early 1942, his country, suddenly at war with the Empire of Japan found its Alaska outpost in dire danger. Its Army needed a land route from the railhead at Dawson Creek to Alaska through some of the most rugged wilderness in North America and it needed it yesterday! They ordered Colonel Hoge to make it happen.
Link to another story “Explosion in Dawson Creek”
He did not have much of a plan—that he would work out on the fly. But he knew he needed a regiment of engineers in Fort Nelson to build north toward Yukon Territory. To his dismay, local experts informed him that ice supported the trail from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson. It would disappear with the fast-approaching spring thaw. Come that thaw, Hoge would be out of luck.
He ordered Colonel Ingalls, commander of the 35th Engineers, to drop everything and bring his regiment up from Fort Ord, California.
Lt. Milton Miletich and his Company B of the 35th stepped onto the platform at Dawson Creek on March 9. Exhausted, freezing, they doggedly headed north—across the Peace River and on to Fort Nelson.
The rest of the regiment came to the platform just a few days later. Over a thousand men had crossed it in just a few days. Anne Haycock of Dawson Creek tells us that the residents of the small town had absolutely no warning; thought the Japanese were right behind the American soldiers.
The desperate struggle to build the epic Alaska Highway had commenced.
