Kiskatinaw Bridge, one of the true engineering marvels of the Alaska Highway did not get built until the Army had moved on. A river just a few miles out of Dawson Creek, Kiskatinaw may have given the soldiers one of their first clues in 1942 that the north country would fight back. But with the winter trail to Ft Nelson melting from under them, they could not stop to deal with it. They made a quick, crude combination bridge and ford and kept going
The Army handed the problem over to the Public Roads Administration who hired Dow Construction Company of Toronto to solve the problem. And solve it, they did.
Dow showed up in November 1942 right behind the soldiers and in nine months built its engineering marvel—the Kiskatinaw Bridge.
The location of the bridge, near a hairpin turn in the River forced Dow to construct a curved right of way. The 190-foot wooden bridge, banks nine degrees as it curves across the river—the first curved timber bridge in Canada.
The project got off to a tough start.
In November Dow installed the cement footings and piers that would support the weight of the bridge. With 800 cubic yards of concrete mixed and poured, an extreme cold snap threw them a major curve ball. Cold concrete does not cure. Dow had to build temporary enclosures around all the concrete piers and keep them heated.
The bridge offered a load capacity of 25 tons. By the seventies trucks driving the Alaska Highway routinely exceeded that and had to avoid the bridge and ford the river instead. In 1978 Canada built a new piece of the Alaska Highway that bypasses the old bridge. At the same time, they created Kiskatinaw Provincial Park.
Travelers on the Highway can drive just a few miles out of their way, explore the old bridge—and drive over it.
Trust me. Put that on your bucket list,
an engineering marvel for sure! well worth the detour to see it AND camp there too. we’ve camped there many times over the years and chatted with many out of town visitors, on 2 different occasions met family of old soldiers that came north to build the hiway, to see where n what their forefathers had done during ww2.
I lived in Dawson Creek and Fort St John 1945 1967 Great bridge drove over it hundreds of times
Wonderful place
I’m not sure if you have spelled the name incorrectly at least five times – perhaps because of some type of copyright rules or if you don’t know the correct spelling. It is Kiskatinaw (no ‘e’). We locals don’t like it much when you name one of our heritage sites incorrectly. I hope you can correct this in a very timeless fashion. Thank you, Marg Forbes, Dawson Creek, B.C.
hahaha atta girl Marg! fort st john’ers taught me the same spelling too!
I am very sorry for the spelling error. The magnificent bridge deserves better. I have called myself out with another post tonite and I also shared the apology on Facebook.
I didn’t know anything about this bridge until now. Thank you for the history lesson. I enjoyed the read very much. 🤗
It’s amazing.