DAWSON CREEK

DAWSON CREEK
Is a small-sized city, located in Northeastern British Columbia, about 405 kilometers northeast of Prince George at the junction of Highways #2, #49, and #97. Dawson Creek was originally a small farming community until it became a regional commercial center in 1932, when the western terminus of the Northern Alberta Railways was extended to here. During 1942 at the height of World War 2 (WWII), contingents from the Army of the United States (US Army), used the townsite as construction point for the Alaska Highway as well as a transshipment point. It is today that Daswon Creek is nicknamed Mile 0 of the Highway, a distance from here to the major Alaskan city of Fairbanks. After World War (WWII), Highway #97 from Prince George (known today as the John Hart Highway, named after the former British Columbia premier; John Hart), was extended to here and five years later the British Columbia Railway Company decided to extend its track from here to Fort St. John. Dawson Creek is the most commercialized of all of the towns `in the entire Peace River/Northeast corner of British Columbia excluding Fort St. John, and has several key industries including coal mining, the oil and gas industry, agriculture and forestry that contribute to the city’s economy. In fact, Dawson Creek is not only the first community in British Columbia to use natural gas but is also considered the wheat capital of British Columbia due to notoriety with several grain elevators in the vicinity of the city. Dawson Creek was first incorporated as a village on May 26, 1936, but unincorporated again as a city on January 6, 1958 and is named after George Mercer Dawson (1849-1901), a surveyor for the Geological Survey of Canada, who explored the area and who served as director of the Geological Survey from 1895 to 1901.

DAWSON CREEK’S POPULATION: 11,811