Out of Dawson Creek, one man, Colonel William Hoge, started the Alaska Highway Project when he left on February 12, 1942 in a car, driven by Homer Keith, his Canadian escort. Nearly a month later Lt. Miletich and his men took themselves out of Dawson Creek in a small convoy of trucks, headed for Fort St. John and points west. A few days later the twelve hundred men of the 35th Engineering Regiment, their D8 and D4 bulldozers, their Osgood steam shovels on flatbed tactical trucks, their rumbling deuce and a half trucks got out of Dawson Creek any way they could.
Link to another story “McCusker and Minaker”
Working on Canada’s string of airfields known as the Northwest Staging Route, a Canadian pathfinder named Knox McKusker won a contract to deliver fuel and supplies to the airfield at Ft Nelson. McKusker couldn’t build a road, but he created a two-track trail that wound its way from Dawson Creek to Ft Nelson. His road took the path of least resistance through the woods and could carry vehicles in winter when the ice instead of water supported it’s bed.
Another Canadian expert, E.J. Spiney, figured out how to move truck convoys over McKusker’s “road”. He set up a series of rest and resupply stations along the route.
McKusker gave Colonel (now General) Hoge his route, E. J. Spiny gave Colonel Ingals, commander of the 35th, a method for getting his soldiers and their equipment over it. The 35th moved over the trail from rest stop to rest stop in an endless stream—for three weeks in March. Spiney’s winterized equipment, piloted by experienced Canadian drivers found the trip difficult. Ingals’ California equipment, piloted by scared young soldiers who had never seen anything remotely like the McKusker trail found it damned near impossible.
At the Peace River where rotting ice undulated under the weight of passing vehicles, Chester Russel drove a flatbed carrying an Osgood Shovel down the 10 percent grade to the river. The Shovel and the flatbed rolled over into the icy mud along the trail.
One of Ingals’ officers looked at soldiers in the back of a canvas covered deuce and a half truck—all but comatose with cold, shivering and crying.
