Km 0.1 - The Canol Road

In 1942 the importance of Alaska to the war effort prompted the U.S. Army to begin construction of an oil pipeline from Norman Wells, N.W.T. to Whitehorse. The Canol, or Canadian Oil project, was completed in 2 years at a cost of $134 million. The ill-fated project was abandoned in the mid 1940s. Many relics may still be seen which provide proof of the extreme construction conditions.

Johnson's Crossing

After the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the American government feared a Japanese invasion of its Alaskan coastline. To counter this threat, the United States Army upgraded the airfields of the Northwest Staging Route and built the Alaska Highway to transport men and equipment to their Alaskan bases.

Construction and maintenance of these strategic transportation routes required enormous amounts of gasoline and oil. Normally, fuel would have been carried north by ship. With the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands, however, the United States Government feared that regular shipping lanes were not safe. The Canol Project was born out of the need for a secure oil supply.

Canol, short for Canada Oil, was a massive effort funded by the United States military and built by the construction consortium, Bechtel-Price- Callahan. Under this project, the oil fields at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories were developed, a refinery was built in Whitehorse, and a four inch pipeline was laid between the two. In addition, 600 miles of road, telephone lines, several airstrips and ten pumping stations were built to service the line. Oil was pumped up and down the highways through auxiliary lines between Whitehorse and Fairbanks, and from Carcross to Watson Lake. A line was also built between Whitehorse and Skagway, Alaska to bring oil from the south if necessary. In all, 200,000 tons of material and over 50,000 people were employed on the Canol. From an estimated cost of $30 million, the final price of this mega-project ballooned to over $134 million.

The project was controversial. It consumed an incredible amount of workers, labour, and materials at a time when they were badly needed elsewhere. The Japanese threat to coastal shipping never materialised. Production costs for a barrel of oil from the Canol was over four times higher than the world price. It was much cheaper to ship oil to the Alaska Highway via the 110 mile line from Skagway. The project was shut down in 1944, less than a year after the refinery had opened. Robert P. Patterson, United States Under Secretary of War, summed up the Canol Project saying: "I suppose that we must bow to the verdict, that the project was useless and a waste of public funds."

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