River after river crisscrossed the path of the Alaska Highway. Smaller streams got quick timber bridges, larger ones brought out the barges and Ferries.
Link to another story “Barge “Bridges”
The black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers, tasked with building an access road for the white soldiers of the 340th from Carcross Yukon to the Tagish River came almost immediately to the Teslin River. A unit came right behind them hauling a barge through the woods and met them at the Tagish. A bridge would come later, much later.
And, of course, their mission took them to the Teslin River. The white soldiers of the 340th followed so close behind them that the soldiers building and the soldiers accessing reached the Teslin all but simultaneously. Civilians would bridge the Teslin much later. In 1942 the soldiers of the 340th boarded barges to carry them down to Teslin and Morley Bay.
And right out of Teslin, directly in the path of the Highway, Nisutlin Bay required barges. Civilians bridged Nisutlin Bay long after the soldiers of the Corps had moved on.
To the south, right at the beginning of the Highway out of Dawson Creek, the first soldiers in country, the 35th found it frozen and crossed on the ice. After that? You guessed it, barges.
The soldiers of the 341st made it a few miles north of Dawson Creek to Fort St. John then ran into sucking mud. They tried to use barges on Charlie lake to bypass the mud. On the very first trip a storm on the lake capsized the barge and drowned seven of them.
North of Whitehorse the 18th made it all the way to the southern tip of Kluane lake, where it meets the river that flows down out of a glacier. Some of them started a bridge, but the rest had to keep going. Mindful of the recent drama at Charlie lake, they crossed nervously and very cautiously. But they crossed.
At the northern end of the Highway the soldiers of the 97th had to cross the Tanana River to build Highway south along the north shore to meet the 18th at the Canadian border. Civilians would bridge the Tanana later. The soldiers used barges and an old civilian steamboat.