Page 72 - Vacation Country Travel Guide

1946, the ten foot high post was presented to the city
original businesses still offer their services and have
their place in the town’s history. On a self-guided
historical walking tour, visitors can see the place
where a fire ignited 60 cases of dynamite, destroying
a city block; the Co-op was the only building left
standing on the block after the “Explosion of 1943.”
Or visit the Dawson Hotel, where a light on top of
the roof used to signal to the police that there was
an emergency. to the beginning of the Alaska Highway by setting
Steeped as it is in history, Dawson Creek has a up a more elaborate marker. On Christmas Day
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and placed at the corner of 102nd Avenue and 10th
Street, one block due south of the Station Museum
in downtown Dawson Creek. It was replaced in the
1960s with a metal post of the same design and
although it doesn’t mark the geographic beginning
of the highway, it does mark the centre of the “Mile
0 City.”
A stone cairn designates the actual beginning of
the highway. The cairn was located in the middle of
the traffic circle on the eastern end of Alaska Avenue,
but because of concern for the safety of visitors who
wanted to pose beside the cairn for pictures, it was
moved across the street to a corner of the NAR Park.
Its location is still true to history, but it is now easier
for tourists to access. A photograph by the Mile
Zero Post is a “must do” for all visitors. At the same
corner, history buffs will be interested in the Alaska
Highway House, where printed cloth panels outline
the history of the Highway; wartime footage and era
propaganda are shown in the theatre.
Each year increasing numbers of tourists from
all parts of the world, the majority bound for Alaska
or the Yukon, move over the Alaska Highway
enjoying the wonders of this natural parkland. With
a panorama of grain fields and mountains, waterfalls
and rivers, valleys and plateaus, the area around
Dawson Creek offers one of the last great unspoiled
Buffalo on the Alaska Highway wilderness vacation and resource lands in Canada.
photo by: Check at the tourist information office to find out
TRAVEL GUIDE about the great fishing and exploring at the many
lakes and rivers in the area and for information on
myriad of sites and landmarks. Its most famous nearby Provincial Parks.
For a truly memorable wilderness adventure,
landmark, the Mile “0” Post, started as a four-foot
piece of wood marking the beginning of the Alaska take a riverboat charter on some of the larger rivers.
Highway. When the post was hit by a car and Higher than Niagara Falls, Kinuseo Falls can be
reached by a forestry road which is not for the faint
demolished, the local Junior Chamber of Commerce
took up the project to construct a new one. When of heart. Bear Mountain Ski Hill and Chalet, as well
as an abundance of snow-covered wide open spaces
Chamber member Ellis Gislason was asked to do the
job, he saw an opportunity to draw more attention for cross-country skiing and snowmobiling insure
plenty of winter excitement.
Visitors will find a variety of hotels and motels
and dozens of restaurants conveniently located.
There are also four RV campgrounds in Dawson
Creek. Department stores, banks, grocery, drug
and hardware stores and many specialty shops
are located both downtown and in the Co-op Mall
and Dawson Mall shopping centres. Numerous
local theatre, musical and artistic groups lend an
enjoyable social and cultural aspect to life for locals
and visitors alike.
Visitors interested in local history will enjoy a
tour of the Walter Wright Pioneer Village with its
restored churches, schools, pioneer log houses,
general store, blacksmith shop and an extensive
display of farm machinery. The facility is open
throughout the summer months. Commercial
enterprises in the village offer excellent services in a
restaurant, general store and gift shop.