91 may have been plausible, given that the Alaska Highway "starts" in Edmonton...
there is actually a control destination of "Alaska" in Edmonton to this day. Jim Teresco has a photo, I believe.
91 through Lethbridge, Calgary, and Edmonton kinda makes sense.
Historically the Alaska Highway has more ties to Edmonton than to central and southern BC. In fact the current route from Dawson Creek to Alaska was constructed to connect the Northwest Staging Route, a series of airports and airstrips that connect the Lower 48 to Alaska and the Soviet Union during World War II. The route ran from Edmonton to Alaska, the two southern legs extending to Great Falls, MT and Minneapolis. If you look at the list of airport & airstrips that were included along the Great Falls route (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Staging_Route), it essentially includes towns along present day I-15, AB 4, AB 2, AB 43, BC 2, BC 97, and YK 1 between Great Falls and Alaska. I have argued that the entire CANAMEX section should be designated as TCH 2 because of the sections of BC 2 and AB 2 that the route follows, coincodently it would link to AK 2.
As a correction, Edmonton does not have a control city to Alaska, the picture you are referring to was taken in Grande Prairie,
http://g.co/maps/u3pzf.
I have looked at a map. They could have, theoretically, picked 101 over 99 or 97. After all, Highway 99 follows the Sea-to-Sky Highway and moves considerably inward northeast en route to Highway 97. That could have been Highway 101, which could have then turned back to the northwest into the Yukon and later Alaska.
Of course that's not what happened, but I just think either 101 or 99 would have made much more sense than 97.
Today's map indicates that BC 99 is the shortest option north, however BC 99 only went as far north as Squamish in 1959, extended north to Whistler when it was developed in the 1960's and linked up with BC 97 in 1992. Even today, the preferred route from Vancouver to northern BC is along TCH 1 & BC 97 - and argument could be made about that route being BC 99 along with Alaska Hwy.
Right, but BC-97 was designated and the route established in 1953. In 1958, America came forward and said "Rah! US Highway to Alaska!" So BC-97 already existed when Alaska US-97 was proposed. If we would have said we wanted that to be US-99 and asked BC to renumber 97 north of 99 to 99 and the Yukon to renumber to 99, they'd have looked at us funny. When BC established their highway numbering, they went to fit the existing US grid which was nice of them, but they didn't further modify to serve US interests- BC-99 didn't become BC-5 when we built I-5, for instance/
Even that was an accomidation of US highways. Prior to 1953, the Cariboo and John Hart Highways (BC 97 between Cache Creek and Dawson Creek) were designated as BC 2 and cosigned as BC 2/97 until 1962 while the Okanagan Hwy was designated as BC 5.
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Topic: Alaska US-97 (Read 23227 times)