(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Route Description
Yukon Highway 1 is 1390 miles (2237 km) long and runs from Dawson Creek, British
Columbia to Delta Junction, Alaska.
Yukon Highway 1 is known as the Alaska Highway, also the Alaskan Highway,
Alaska-Canadian Highway, and the Alcan Highway. It is popularly (but
unofficially) considered part of the Pan-American Highway, which connects to
Argentina.
The British Columbia government owns the first 82.6 miles of the highway, the
only portion paved during the late 1960s and 1970s. Public Works Canada manages
the highway from Mile 82.6 (km 133) to Historic Mile 630. The Yukon government
owns the highway from Historic Mile 630 to Historic Mile 1016 (from near Watson
Lake to Haines Junction), and manages the remainder to the U.S. border at
Historic Mile 1221. The State of Alaska owns the highway within that state (Mile
1221 to Mile 1422).
Extensive rerouting in Canada has shortened the highway by approximately 35
miles (55 km) since 1947, mostly by eliminating winding sections and sometimes
by bypassing residential areas. Therefore, the historic milepost markings are no
longer accurate but are still important locally as location references. Some old
sections of the highway are still in use as local roads, while others are left
to deteriorate and still others are ploughed up. Four sections form local
residential streets in Whitehorse (3) and Fort Nelson (1), and others form
country residential roadways outside of Whitehorse. Although Champagne, Yukon
was bypassed in 2002, the old highway is still completely in service for that
community until a new direct access road is built.
Rerouting continues, expected to continue in the Yukon through 2009, with the
Haines Junction-Beaver Creek section covered by the Canada-U.S. Shakwak
Agreement. Under Shakwak, U.S. federal highway money is spent for work done by
Canadian contractors who win tenders issued by the Yukon government. The Shakwak
Project completed the Haines Highway upgrades in the 1980s between Haines
Junction and the Alaska Panhandle, then funding was stalled by Congress for
several years.
The Milepost shows the Canadian section of the highway now to be
approximately 1187 miles, but the first milepost inside Alaska is 1222. The
actual length of the highway inside Alaska is no longer clear because rerouting,
as in Canada, has shortened the route, but unlike Canada, mileposts in Alaska
are not recalibrated. The B.C. and Yukon governments and Public Works Canada
have recalibrated kilometreposts only as far as a point just west of Champagne,
with the latest BC recalibration in 1990 and the only Yukon recalibrations in
2002 and 2005 (based on the distance value where the BC calibration of 1990 left
off).
There are historical mileposts along the B.C. and Yukon sections of the
highway, installed in 1992, that note 83 specific locations, although the posts
no longer represent accurate driving distance.
The portion of the Alaska Highway in Alaska is Alaska Route 2. In the Yukon,
it is Highway 1 and in British Columbia, Highway 97.
The Canadian section of the road was delineated with mileposts, based on the
road as it was in 1947, until 1978, and over the years, reconstruction steadily
shortened the distance between some of those mileposts. That year, metric signs
were placed on the highway, and the mileposts were replaced with kilometre posts
at the approximate locations of a historic mileage of equal value, e.g. Kmpost
1000 was posted approximately where historical Mile 621 would have been posted.
Reconstruction continues to shorten the highway, but the kilometre posts, at
two-km intervals, were recalibrated along the B.C. section of road in 1990 to
reflect then-current driving distance. The section of highway covered by the
1990 realignment has since been rendered shorter by further realignments, such
as near Summit Pass and between Muncho Lake and Iron Creek.
Based on where those values left off, new Yukon kilometre posts were erected
in fall 2002 between the B.C. border and the west end of the new bypass around
Champagne, Yukon; in 2005, additional recalibrated posts continued from there to
the east shore of Kluane Lake near Silver City. Old kilometre posts, based on
the historic miles, remain on the highway from that point around Kluane Lake to
the Alaska border. The B.C. and Yukon sections also have a small number of
historic mileposts, printed on oval-shaped signs, at locations of historic
significance; these special signs were erected in 1992 on the occasion of the
highway's 50th anniversary.
The Alaska portion of the highway is still marked by mileposts at one-mile
intervals, although they no longer represent accurate driving distance, due to
reconstruction.
The historic mileposts are still used by residents and businesses along the
highway to refer to their location, and in some cases are also used as postal
addresses.
Residents and travelers, and the government of the Yukon, do not use "east"
and "west" to refer to direction of travel on the Yukon section, even though
this is the predominant bearing of the Yukon portion of the highway; "north" and
"south" are used, referring to the south (Dawson Creek) and north (Delta
Junction) termini of the highway. This is an important consideration for
travelers who may otherwise be confused, particularly when a westbound travel
routes southwestward or even due south to circumvent a natural obstacle such as
Kluane Lake.
Some B.C. sections west of Fort Nelson also route more east-to-west, with
southwest bearings in some section; again, "north" is used in preference to
"west".
