Dust for Sale: Infrastructural Residues and the Voluminous Geographies of the Alaska Highway

• In Event: Sedimentary Speculation: Valuing Dust, Mud, Sand, and Stone

Abstract

In 1964, Flo Whyard, Bob Erlan and John Scott of Whitehorse, Yukon canned Alaska Highway dust. Tourists could buy these cans to take home as souvenirs for friends, family, or themselves. The label read, “Relive that exhilarating thrill of driving the Alaska Highway. Stand in front of your electric fan on a hot day and pour the contents of this can slowly into the whirring blades. This mixture is recommended for obscuring license plates and dimming headlights.” The can guaranteed that, “If after eating a tin of this genuine Alaska Highway Dust you are not satisfied, we will supply you with another tin at cost.”
These little cans of souvenir dust were being sold as a scheme to promote the paving of the long road. At the time, only 354 miles of the 1,523-mile highway were hard surfaced. Regional interests organized as the ‘Pave-the-Alaska-Highway in the 1960s following two decades after the completion of the Alaska Highway pioneer road. Following the Second World War, US-Canadian bi-national cost sharing program for a unified paving effort could not be justified. This paper brings together literature on airborne sedimentation, atmospheric heritage, dust, extractivism, and cultural tourism to make sense of Alaska Highway souvenir dust as a significant material trace. In addition, I include my own embodied and sensory insights from a 2023 drive along the Alaska Highway which traverses Northern British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. At present, this route is frequently subject to other environmental factors such as forest fires, frost heaves and washouts that further contribute to present-day “dust problems.”

Author

• Desiree Valadares, University of British Columbia-Vancouver