Descending on Dawson Creek, British Columbia in the early spring of 1942, the Alaska Highway building soldiers of the United States Army came as a complete and very sudden surprise.
Link to another story “Dawson Creek and the North Country”
Trappers Rose Mould and her husband left their cabin one morning to walk their trap lines through the deep woods. Returning home, they discovered that in their absence someone had bulldozed a road through the woods near their cabin.
Rose Wilson was a teacher in her early twenties when the soldiers arrived in her town and military trucks created what was probably the first ever traffic jam on Main Street. Shocked villagers had no idea why they were suddenly inundated with soldiers. Were the Japanese coming?
Mrs. Catherine Edwards, “Aunt Kate”, a respected early settler observed the addition of more than 10,000 military and civilian personnel to the population of her tiny village with equal amazement.
Ann Campbell lived with her husband above Bowe’s and Herron Garage. She glanced out her window one day and spotted a large army truck down on the street. Seventeen soldiers climbed out.
Dawson Creek’s 540 residents had survived the “hungry thirties”. They formed a tight knit community, looking after one another and celebrating heritage events. Dawson Creek had formally become a village in 1936.
Then, in two months beginning that first week in March, a total of three engineering regiments, one topographic company, a pontoon company and a quartermaster detachment detrained at Dawson Creek.
And it didn’t stop there. Within another five weeks that spring, six hundred carloads of PRA men and equipment arrived by rail at Dawson Creek in preparation for their part in the construction of the “the Truck Trail”.
