(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Route Description
Yukon Highway 3 is 152 miles (244 km) long and runs from Haines, Alaska to
Haines Junction, Yukon.
Yukon Highway 3, also called the Haines Highway, Haines Cut-Off and the
Haines Road, was originally a trail used by Chilkat Tlingit traders, which
eventually became the Dalton Trail. It was used by some prospectors during the
Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-1899; other mining kept the lower Dalton Trail active
through the years following its establishment. The British Columbia provincial
government converted its portion of the trail to a wagon road in 1909 when
copper mining began at Copper Butte and Mt. Glave. In 1911, 30 tons of ore were
shipped from the mines.
The highway was built by the U.S. Army in 1943 as an alternate route from the
Pacific Ocean to the Alaska Highway, in case the White Pass and Yukon Route
railway from Skagway should be blocked. The total cost of the construction was
US$13 million.
In the first decades after the war, maintenance was spotty at best; the road
was plagued with blizzards in winter and mudslides in summer, and for a time in
the 1960s and 1970s, all vehicles traveling the highway were monitored on radio.
Year-round access was not achieved until 1963.
Complaints over the condition of the road, primarily in Alaska, led to the
U.S. Congress-funded Shakwak reconstruction project. This project, covering the
Haines Highway and the portion of the Alaska Highway from Haines Junction to the
U.S. border, began in 1976 and was mostly complete by the 1980s, but is still
continuing, providing grade improvements, rerouting of dangerous sections, and
paving. Responsibility for maintenance is currently shared between the Alaska
and Yukon governments.
