British Columbia - Dawson Creek

Dawson Creek


Dawson Creek is best known as the official starting point of the Alaska Highway, even though its original definition included an extension to Grande Prairie, AB. Those photos are on my roads page (linked at bottom).


Here we have touchy-feely stuff like murals. But the murals have roads! I have to hold to a theme here. Now, it's all wrong with the routing and the shapes of borders, but that's artistic licence for you.


Things like lampposts and hotels are found on roads - in this case 102 Avenue west of 9 Street - but they're not all that road-related. Okay, lampposts are. But it's here because... because I want to.


This modern sculpture of a man pointing to Alaska is in the modern roundabout where Highways 2 and 49 intersect, thus marking the modern beginning of the Alaska Highway. Once more, art meets road.


A railroad is still a type of road, so we're still not completely divested from the roads aspect of this page.


This old wagon traveled on roads before roads had signs.


I can tie this grain elevator to roads in two ways, but both are a stretch: it was found and is still located along a railroad (yes, they're railways in Canada, but I'm reaching here), and it had to be moved here by road. There was once a stand of 8 elevators dominating Dawson Creek, and from 1947-1952, the city led the entire British Empire in grain production from a single source, thanks to the extension of the Northern Alberta Railway here in 1931. However, by 1982, 6 of the 8 had been demolished and it took a ground movement with considerable Federal support to move this 1948 example (Alberta Wheat Pool Elevator #2) instead of consigning it to the same fate. The elevator stands 95 feet and there's now an art museum in its annex. You can walk inside the elevator if it's open, but it wasn't, so I didn't.


The old scale house and office came with it.

See more of the Alaska Highway along Highway 97

Dawson Creek (Highway 2) roads photos
Back to British Columbia Non-Roads
Back to Non-Roads main page