Watson Lake and the Sign Post Forest

An Accumulating Folk Monument On The Alaska Highway, Begun By A Homesick US Army Soldier In 1942 And Now Carrying Over 100,000 Signs Brought From All Over The World · Watson Lake, Yukon

In 1942 a homesick American soldier working on the Alaska Highway was told to repair a directional signpost at Watson Lake, and while he was at it he nailed up a board pointing to his home town in Illinois. Other people added their own. THE SIGN POST FOREST NOW CARRIES WELL OVER A HUNDRED THOUSAND SIGNS on rank after rank of posts - road signs prised off poles, licence plates, hand-painted boards, dinner plates, number plates from every province and a great many countries - and the town supplies blanks and a hammer if you arrive without one. It is a genuinely odd and genuinely moving thing: an accumulating monument built entirely by passers-by over more than eighty years, with no curator and no plan. Watson Lake itself is the first Yukon town on the Alaska Highway coming up from British Columbia, a service stop where everyone stops, and the highway's own history - the 1942 construction, the airfields, the Northwest Staging Route - is told in the town's centre.

Alaska Highway at the Robert Campbell Highway junction, Watson Lake, Watson Lake, Yukon, Canada

THE SIGN POST FOREST IS OPEN AT ALL TIMES, ALL YEAR, WITH NO ADMISSION - it is an open lot beside the Alaska Highway with no gate and no closing time, and it is lit enough to walk through in the dark. WHAT IS SEASONAL IS EVERYTHING ELSE: the visitor information centre, the Northern Lights Centre and most of the town's tourist services run roughly MAY TO SEPTEMBER, on daily summer hours, and are closed or much reduced outside that. THE TOWN'S FUEL, GROCERIES AND ACCOMMODATION OPERATE YEAR-ROUND, which matters because Watson Lake is a service stop on a highway with very long gaps. IF YOU WANT TO ADD A SIGN, blanks and tools have been available at the visitor centre in season - OUTSIDE SEASON, BRING YOUR OWN. The Alaska Highway here is paved and maintained all year.

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