Dempster Highway - History

History

Much of the highway follows an old dog sled trail. The highway is named after Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector William John Duncan Dempster, who, as a young constable, frequently ran the dog sled trail from Dawson City to Fort McPherson NWT. Inspector Dempster and two other constables were sent out on a rescue patrol in March 1911, to find Inspector Francis Joseph Fitzgerald and his men of three who never made it to Dawson City. They had become lost on the trail, and subsequently died of exposure and starvation. Dempster and his men found the bodies on March 22, 1911.

In 1958 the Canadian government made the historic decision to build a 671 km (417 mi) 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 17 August 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 km (71 mi) of roadbed had been built before the project was abandoned. The route was known as Highway 11 until 1978.

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 waters among the Arctic islands which, though claimed by Canada, were asserted by the United States as high seas.