Rusty Dow, the first woman to drive a fully loaded truck the length of the Alaska Highway, did it in 1944. She drove the 1600 miles from Fairbanks to Dawson Creek in seven days, and she astonished every man along the way.
Rusty had been driving trucks down in California for several years when her brother, a homesteader in the Matanuska Valley convinced her that Alaska offered opportunity to a truck driver willing to work. She drove north into adventure. In 1940, after six years of freelance trucking in Alaska, the Army hired her to drive for the Engineering Division at Fort Richardson.
The war came. The Army rushed north to build the Alaska Highway. Civilian contractors came behind the soldiers, straightening, fixing, improving. By 1943 the highway had improved enough that an especially skilled group of commercial truckers began using it.
In 1944 Rusty told General Simon Buckner, commander of US forces in Alaska, that she dreamed of one day driving the Alaska Highway. On June 1, a major summoned her to his office from the loading dock on base and handed her travel orders signed by Buckner. She flew to Fairbanks and at Northwest Service Command they matched her with a decrepit old Studebaker carrying 5 tons of cement.
She wrote later of the truck, “busted gas and mileage gauges, no speed indicator and bald tires.” She carried a stick to measure the fuel level in her tank.
She caused consternation for the men in the motor pool and she caused consternation for men all along the way. Every check station checked and rechecked her paperwork. At Destruction bay on Kluane Lake she walked into the mess hall and a staring cook dropped his frying pan.
The old Studebaker caused problems all the way to Whitehorse—flat tires, balky engine… But in Whitehorse, they took her cargo, issued her a new Studebaker with a fresh load and dispatched her to Dawson Creek.
Arriving at Dawson Creek in the wee hours of the morning, she curled up in her sleeping bag on top of her load. A collection of Quonset huts nearby turned out to be barracks and a fascinated audience of young soldiers watched her squirm back into her coveralls—inside the sleeping bag.
Two days later, with a fresh load, she headed back to Fairbanks.
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