Drive to Telegraph Creek

The Stikine River region, along the Stewart-Cassiar Highway which we are driving south from the Alaska Highway toward Prince Rupert, B.C., is the traditional home of the Tahltan people, who have lived there for generations and today still practice many of the traditional ways of life along the Stikine River that is their home.  The modern history of the Telegraph Creek and Dease Lake area dates back to the 1860s and 1870s with the Stikine and Cassiar Gold Rushes. Telegraph Creek witnessed the discovery of gold by prospectors on the Stikine River in the 1860s and was the head of navigation.

In 1866, the construction of the Russian-American Telegraph line to the Yukon gave Telegraph Creek its name. While that telegraph line was never completed, the Government of Canada completed construction of the Yukon Telegraph Line along the same route in 1901.  The telegraph line extends to Telegraph Creek from southern B.C., and continues on, northwest, to Atlin and ultimately to Dawson City, Yukon.

Telegraph Creek, and the telegraph line, play a role in the story of Lillian Alling, a Polish or Ukrainian woman who had emigrated to New York City around 1925.  She was immediately disappointed in the so-called land of opportunity, and almost immediately started planning a route to return to her Slavic home.  Probably because she could not afford Transatlantic passage, she researched a route for walking across North America, starting in 1927.  She made it to B.C. that October, was put in prison in Vancouver, ostensibly for vagrancy but in fact to give her food and shelter for the winter.  In the spring, she made her way up from Vancouver.  She followed the telegraph line and the roads that often paralleled it.  The telegraphers who lived in cabins along the line learned about her trek and took pains to communicate with each other and help her along her way.  She stopped for a time in Telegraph Creek, and again in Atlin (we discussed her in a blog about Atlin earlier this trip).  She made it to Dawson before winter and spent the cold season doing odd jobs and resting for her third year of travel, on to the coast of Alaska and the Bering Sea and (some reported) somehow eventually landing in Siberia on someone's boat.  Otherwise, her fate is unknown.

Because of all of this colorful history, we wanted to drive Telegraph Road and visit Telegraph Creek.  We had no time or means of driving it in our earlier visit along the Cassiar Highway in 2016, but this time we made plans to complete the visit.  Although the snowstorm in Dease Lake frustrated our plans to stay overnight at a small cabin in Telegraph Creek, the weather a couple days later was benign enough to permit a long day trip.

We started with a side trip down the Cassiar about 30 km to check out the conditions at the height of Gnat Pass.  Kathy pronounced the snow tasty --

-- and the Gnat Pass Summit sign pronounced the road fit for our motorhome to travel the following day --

 

-- so we felt we could continue on out Telegraph Road.  As we drove, the snow remaining from the previous night's snowfall still graced the ground on the side of the roads.  The streams ran merrily:

The road to Telegraph Creek is beautiful but rough, with 69 miles of gravel, steep grades of up to 20%, narrow passages along canyon walls with no guardrails, and sharp-angled switchbacks. It was just the kind of drive that our Jeep Dusty loves!

There was no false advertising.  We saw steep grades, dramatic canyon views and lots of volcanic peaks and cliffs:

Despite the snow, the streams were still running normally with their gorgeous powder-blue glacial till:

Fall colors have already crept into things, and they were very evident on the hillsides.  Even the birch and aspen along the road were starting to show some early fall yellows:

Periodically, the road crossed a side stream on some ancient wooden bridge that we only trusted because huge logging and gasoline supply trucks crossed it before us:

About a third of the way out the road, we came across the First Nations community of Tahltan, mostly abandoned except for perhaps a dozen residences, some of which were picturesque:

 

Following the Stikine River, we rose high above it and were gifted grand, sweeping views of the canyon up the river toward Dease Lake where we had started:

A truck driver who we had let pass us had to wait, in turn, for a road grader that was working on a one-lane section of the road.  While we were waiting, he told us to take a look at Eagle Rock above Tahltan as we drove back to Dease Lake.  We did as he suggested and were treated to this wonderful view of a site treasured by the local community:

After over 2 hours of driving, we arrived at Telegraph Creek:

As advertised, the village (still inhabited) consists mainly of the original structures built during the Gold Rush days, including this church --

-- and this whimsical cabin decorated in boat propellers:

An old wooden boat graces the entrance to a long gravel road down to a beach where rafters access the Stikine River for white water adventures:

We walked the one main street.  Here, David strolls past some of the historic buildings, which looked like they hadn't been painted recently -- or ever:

The drive was one of the more memorable Jeep drives we've taken.  The road worker we met on our way in had warned us that places along the road would be "slidey."  Indeed, they were.  The road surface was not rocky or potholed, but it was very muddy from recent rains and snows, so we needed to drive carefully to avoid slip-sliding away.

We had left early in the morning, and it was about 5pm when we arrived home -- a full day's adventure.  But it was interesting to see a road and a town that played such big roles in the early history of British Columbia.