July 19, 1947 – “Everybody we’ve met who’s in business along the whole length of the Alaska Highway is sore at the authorities for not letting down the barriers to tourists.

Actually, it’s a cockeyed experience to travel this fine road, expensively maintained with million-dollar steel bridges and its magnificent scenery, and to be literally all alone for day after day. We are writing stories about our experience, it’s true, but in every respect we’re tourists on a holiday. And we’ve had the whole darn thing to ourselves.

The explanation for this is pretty simple. There just never was a road before like this. There’s no precedent for the situation. Almost overnight this wide, wonderful strip of land through the north became available for motorists. It caught everybody completely by surprise. Thousands of tourists in Canada and the States have applied to travel its length and been turned down cold. Nobody’s happy about it.

Some tourists are sneaking in, satisfying the authorities that they’re on ‘business.’ But almost all the travel is legitimately made up of settlers going to Alaska or business men making advance arrangements to sell their products along the route when it opens up.

Even so, it’s a rare day when more than 25 cars are checked through the barrier at Blueberry, B.C., the point on the road where the RCMP give you the once over. In May, a total of 369 vehicles were allowed to pass (an average of 12 a day).”

(The Vancouver Sun – Vancouver, B.C.)