Liard Hot Springs, four hundred seventy miles northwest of Dawson Creek, British Columbia and Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway, provided a thoroughly unusual experience for the soldiers who built the great Highway in 1942.
Today it still offers an unusual experience for those lucky travelers who get to scratch driving the Highway off their bucket list.
Actually, Liard has two hot springs, Alpha and a bit further from the road, Beta. The springs, whose water temperatures range well above 100 degrees F, warm the muskeg in the surrounding swamp. And Liard’s warm muskeg supports lush forest. Boardwalks from the parking area keep human visitors’ feet out of the mud.
Wild critters love the warm Liard swamp as much as people do—moose and bears flock there. Bears especially love the water in Beta, a bit farther from the Highway and the parking area. Because neither humans nor bears play well with others, especially with each other, the Park Service has permanently closed Beta and removed the boardwalk to it.
The soldiers building Highway north reached the Hot Springs in late summer and early fall. In British Columbia the weather had already cooled toward winter and the men welcomed the Hot Springs. Soldiers built the first boardwalks from the road to the springs.
In 1942 Cameron Cox ‘invaded’ British Columbia with the 35th Engineering Regiment. Cameron drove an air compressor truck, an air compressor on a truck chassis. Compressed air powered jack hammers, rock drills and other tools.
Cameron remembered the Hot Springs. At one spot warm water lay deep across the road. A truck driving through wet its undercarriage; found it frozen solid a few miles down the road.
“We put up a tent over one of the hot spring pools and had our own hot tub when it was well below zero outside.”
More on the Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park