Dempster Highway

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Dempsters Highway near the Richardson Mountains.

The Dempster Highway, also referred to as Yukon Highway 5 and Northwest Territories Highway 8, is a highway that connects the Klondike Highway in the Yukon Territory of Canada to Inuvik, Northwest Territories on the Mackenzie River delta. During the winter months, the highway extends another 194 kilometres to Tuktoyaktuk, on the northern coast of Canada, using frozen portions of the Mackenzie River delta as an ice road. The highway crosses the Peel River and the Mackenzie Rivers using a combination of seasonal ferry service and ice bridges.

The highway begins about 40 km (25 miles) east of Dawson City, Yukon on the Klondike Highway and extends 736 km (457 miles) to Inuvik.

Much of the highway follows an old dog sled trail. The highway is named after Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector William Dempster, who as a young Constable, frequently ran the dog sled trail from Dawson City, Yukon to Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories.

[edit] History

In 1958 the Canadian government made the historic decision to build a 671 kilometre (417 mile) road through the Arctic wilderness from Dawson City to Inuvik. Oil and gas exploration was booming in the Mackenzie Delta and the town of Inuvik was under construction. The road was billed as the first-ever overland supply link to southern Canada, where business and political circles buzzed with talk of an oil pipeline that would run parallel to the road. The two would ultimately connect with another proposed pipeline along the Alaska Highway.

On August 17, 1959, Ottawa announced that oil had been discovered in the territory’s Eagle Plains, and almost immediately, the government gave major concessions to the oil industry in an attempt to stimulate more exploration in the area. It was realised that a highway across the Arctic Circle would be needed to transport equipment, infrastructure and revenue to and from the sites. Consequently, construction began at Dawson City in January 1959. However, the highway's high costs, in addition to ongoing wrangling between the federal and Yukon governments kept progress at a snail’s pace until 1961, when building stopped altogether. Only 115 kilometres (72 miles) of roadbed had been built before the project was abandoned.

There were no more developments until 1968, when a discovery of huge reserves of oil and gas at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska was made. This led to increased competition between the authorities in America and Canada. Billions of dollars were at stake, and political fortunes hung in the balance on both sides of the border. The Canadian government was afraid that the United States would develop the massive oil field with no consultation, no consideration and no benefits to its next-door neighbour. It wanted to assert Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic seabed off the Yukon’s north coast in the Beaufort Sea, and over the Arctic islands which were still unclaimed by any nation.

[edit] Final Construction

The Dempster Highway - Canada’s first all-weather road to cross the Arctic Circle - was officially opened on August 18, 1979, at Flat Creek, Yukon. It was unveiled as a two-lane, gravel-surfaced, all-weather highway that ran 671 kilometres (417 miles) from the Klondike Highway near Dawson City to Fort McPherson and Arctic Red River in the Northwest Territories. The Canadian Armed Forces 1st Combat Engineer Regiment from Chilliwack, British Columbia, built the two major bridges over the Ogilvie and Eagle Rivers. Ferries handle the traffic at the Peel River crossing near Fort McPherson and the Arctic Red River crossing near Tsiigehtchic. The Dempster adjoins a winter road that follows the Mackenzie River south to Wrigley.

The design of the highway is unique, primarily due to the intense physical conditions it is put through. The highway itself sits on top of a gravel berm to insulate the permafrost in the soil underneath. The thickness of the gravel pad ranges from 1.2 metres up to 2.4 metres in some places (four feet to eight feet). Without the pad, the permafrost would melt and the road would sink into the ground.

In addition to services in Fort McPherson, Tsiigehtchic and Inuvik, there is one location with commercial services along the highway, at Eagle Plains. It is an important fuel and food stop because of the great distance, and harbours stranded travelers when the highway is closed due to extreme weather conditions.

During the early 1990s, Northwestel erected microwave towers along the highway to facilitate public safety with manual mobile telephone service and to provide government agencies such as highway maintenance and the RCMP with communications; the microwave project was opposed by some environmental interests and those who preferred the pristine appearance of the route; one suggestion to install fibre optics would not have enabled mobile communications; since then, the route has become the terrestrial link to the exchanges in the Mackenzie Delta region.