Section Two

Trucks were increasingly used for short distance hauling of freight, or in areas where the trains did not run. In the cities automobiles and electric street cars became the favoured mode of travel.

Delivery truck in Mission, 1914
B-07901
Freight trucks on the Cariboo Road, 1918
Detail of D-09303

Loading boxes of apples on a
truck in the Okanagan, 1930
B-06876

Freight truck at the railway
station, in Duncan, 1924
C-02450


Logs were originally hauled from the forest to sawmills by oxen and horses and later by logging railways. Logging trucks were introduced in the 1920s and they have now completely replaced the railways in the bush.

Loading truck on
Vancouver Island, 1937
B-07875
Logging truck on a road of wooden
planks, Prince George region,
in the 1940s
F-08498


Construction of the
Big Bend Highway, 1930s.
Detail of F-08972

The Big Bend Highway was an important part of the route through the Rocky Mountains until the completion of the Roger's Pass section of the Trans Canada Highway in 1962.

Part of Highway 16
[Yellowhead Highway]
between Prince George,
and Prince Rupert, 1949
I-26293

 

During the Depression years of the 1930s the government sponsored road construction as a way of providing work to the unemployed, which helped to expand the highway system.

The Trans Canada Highway
through Roger's Pass in 1967
I-27438
Most of these roads remained unpaved however, and it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the modern highway system now familiar to travellers was constructed.

One of the snow sheds on
Roger's Pass in 1966.
I-21410
Roger's Pass, always subject to heavy snow falls and avalanches, is kept open through the winter with avalanche control and snow sheds that deflect the avalanches over the highway.

The growth in the use of automobiles and other motor vehicles has greatly affected the development of all countries in the western world. In British Columbia networks of highways have opened up all areas of the province, aiding in its economic development and providing road links to disparate communities. The ability of individuals to have independent means of transportation via automobiles has also affected the province's urban development by determining the way cities and towns have grown, where they are located, where people decide to live and how they commute between destinations.





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