June 24, 2016
Alaska Highway, Milepost 635
Watson Lake is a small community of 1,563 just north of the British Columbia-Yukon border. It calls itself the “Gateway to the Yukon”. Watson Lake is a communication and distribution center for the southern Yukon; a base for trappers, hunters and fisherman; and a supply point for the area’s mining and mineral exploration. It was named for Frank Watson, who settled there in 1898 with his wife Adela Stone, of Kaska First Nation heritage. Watson was from Tahoe City, California and had come north looking for gold. Watson Lake was an important point during construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942. The airport, built in 1941, was one of the major refueling stops along the Northwest Staging Route, the system of airfields through Canada to ferry supplies to Alaska and later lend-lease aircraft to Russia in World War II.
On the road to Watson Lake
We were surprised to spot a bison grazing near the road.
Watson Lake is home to the Alaska Highway Interpretive Center; the Northern Lights Center, the only planetarium in North America featuring the Northern Lights in video and laser presentation; and the Watson Lake Sign Post Forest. The Sign Post Forest was started by Carl Lindley, a U.S. soldier working on the construction of the Alaska Highway who had been ordered to repair a road sign damaged by a bulldozer. He repaired the sign and then personalized the job by adding a sign pointing to his hometown in Illinois and the distance to it. Several other people added directions to their hometowns and the idea snowballed.
The Sign Post Forest now takes up a couple of acres with new signs added constantly. Everyone is allowed to add their own street sign, welcome sign or license plate to the collection which now contains more than 85,000 signs. The Watson Lake Sign Post Forest has been designated a Yukon Historic Site and is one of the most popular attractions on the Alaska Highway.
The Sign Post Forest also had several pieces of the equipment used to construct the Alaska Highway scattered through the forest.
Wye Lake Park in Watson Lake has a nice 1.5-mile trail with interpretive signs about the Yukon’s birds and wildflowers.
The stone that the Wye Lake plaque is on is solid jade about 5 feet tall.
1 Comment
Susan · August 9, 2018 at 12:12 pm
Did you add a sign? You are seeing a lot of interesting things on this trip!