The Haines Highway or Haines Cut-Off (and still often called Haines Road ) is a highway that connects Haines, Alaska , in the United States , with Haines Junction, Yukon , Canada, passing through the province of British Columbia . It follows the route of the old Dalton Trail from the port of Haines inland for about 180 km (110 mi) to Klukshu, Yukon , and then continues to Haines Junction. The highway is about 244 km (152 mi) long, of which 72 km (45 mi) is in Alaska .
4-537: The highway was known as Yukon Highway 4 until 1978, when it was renumbered Highway 3. It has no number in British Columbia, but editions of The Milepost up to at least 2004 list it as Hwy 4 , a number actually in use on Vancouver Island . The Alaska section is part of Alaska Route 7 . The route was originally a trail used by Chilkat Tlingit traders, which eventually became the Dalton Trail . It
8-594: A time in the 1960s and 1970s, all vehicles traveling the highway were monitored on radio . Year-round access was not achieved until 1963. Complaints over the condition of the road, primarily in Alaska, led to the U.S. Congress -funded Shakwak reconstruction project. This project, covering the Haines Highway and the portion of the Alaska Highway from Haines Junction to the U.S. border, began in 1976 and
12-529: Was built by the U.S. Army in 1943 as an alternate route from the Pacific Ocean to the Alaska Highway , in case the White Pass and Yukon Route railway from Skagway should be blocked. The total cost of the construction was US$ 13 million. In the first decades after the war , maintenance was spotty at best; the road was plagued with blizzards in winter and mudslides in summer, and for
16-470: Was used by some prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-1899; other mining kept the lower Dalton Trail active through the years following its establishment. The British Columbia provincial government converted its portion of the trail to a wagon road in 1909 when copper mining began at Copper Butte and Mt. Glave . In 1911, 30 tons of ore were shipped from the mines. The highway
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