Destinations

Highway 37 is one of British Columbia’s most scenic and historic routes of travel. Before the traveller unfolds an ever-changing, ever-rugged wilderness. From glaciers at your feet on the highway into Stewart, to the spectacular Grand Canyon of the Stikine, to Dease Lake the Jade Capital of the World,  to the vivid blue lakes of the Liard plain, to the totemic art of Gitanyow (Kitwancool) and Gitwangak--you are in immediate touch with the majesty of Northern British Columbia.

Great Northern Circle Tour

The Stewart-Cassiar Highway 37 is the western North South section of the Great Northern Circle Tour connecting the Yellowhead Hwy 16 with the Alaska Hwy 97 just west of Watson Lake, Yukon.  This 8-14 day road trip takes you through some of the most beautiful areas in Northern BC.  For a sample itinerary visit Northern BC Tourism.

Visit the communities of Kitwanga, Stewart, Hyder, Meziadin, Iskut, Dease Lake, and Telegraph Creek along Hwy 37 on your way to or back from Alaska and discover all the remarkable opportunities this area has to offer.

History of the Region

This is a region of adventurers and ambition. The first European incursions into this land began with the fur trade. As early as 1833, the Hudsons Bay Company had a post established at Dease Lake. In 1865 the Collins Overland Telegraph Company started construction of an intercontinental communications link with Europe via the Bering Strait. The project came to an abrupt conclusion when a competitor successfully laid a cable across the Atlantic Ocean, but the Telegraph Trail would be used for many years to come. The region’s mining history predates the Klondike Gold Rush. There were gold rushes on the Stikine River beginning in 1861 and the Cassiar region in the 1870s. In 1874, Laketon, at the mouth of Dease Creek, had a population estimated as high as 8000. The province’s largest gold nugget was reportedly found in placer deposits at Centreville on the Dease River. Laketon and Centreville are now ghost towns.

During WWII, activity in parts of the region again was hectic. Following one of the most popular gold rush routes into the northwest, many tons of supplies were ferried up the Stikine River to Telegraph Creek, trucked overland on a tortuous route to Dease Lake, then placed on riverboats to travel north along the Dease and Liard Rivers to Watson Lake. The supplies were for construction of an aerodrome at Watson Lake. The airport was part of the Northwest Staging Route--a series of airports that would ultimately connect Edmonton, Alberta, with Fairbanks, Alaska for supply to the USSR.

Telegraph Creek was the end point of sternwheeler navigation on the Stikine River. To assist the movement of goods and people, a 75 mile road was built in the 1920s from Telegraph Creek to Dease Lake. About 70 miles of road was constructed after WWII south from the Alaska Highway into the McDame placer gold mining region. Around 1950, asbestos was discovered in the Cassiar region and within several years a major mine developed and the townsite of Cassiar founded. Until 1978 asbestos fibre was trucked northward 360 miles, transferred to the White Pass and Yukon Rail Line, transported to the port at Skagway, Alaska, and shipped to Vancouver. Road construction south from Cassiar began as early as 1953 but access to the port at Stewart not made until a section of road was finished in the Ningunsaw Pass in 1972. An all-Canadian route was therefore developed for the movement of goods to and from Cassiar. Even though the Cassiar townsite is abandoned and neither community is the terminal point of the highway, Highway 37 is often referred to as the “Stewart-Cassiar Highway” based on these economic connections.

The single-lane wooden bridge built in 1972 over the Nass River just south of Meziadin made a link between Highway 16 and the “Stewart-Cassiar” possible, but it was not until 1976 that the route was completed with opening of a bridge across the Skeena River at Kitwanga.