Photography

Signpost Forest

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Watson Lake, Yukon, is famous for its signpost forest. Signpost forest, you ask? Yes, this community has a forest composed entirely of signs, all kinds of them.

It all began in 1942 during the construction of the Alcan (Alaska) highway when the engineers working on the highway erected signs listing places, directions and distances to locations in Yukon, to other Canadian locations and to U.S. locations as well.

Carl Lindley, a homesick WW II soldier, added his hometown sign to the army signpost and started a tradition.

Since then, people from all over the world have added hometown signs to the forest. At last count, there were about 60,000 signs that include vehicle licence plates, homemade placards and other glyphs, symbols and signifiers.

In 1992 when Carl Lindley returned to Watson Lake with his wife, Eleanor, for the first time since 1943, he was overwhelmed at how the signpost forest had grown.

During a sign reenactment ceremony, he replaced his original sign – the first one had since rotted away.

The signpost forest is one of the best-known attractions along the 2414 km highway from Dawson Creek, B.C. to Fairbanks, AK.

The sign pictured above gives the history of the forest including a picture of the original signpost.

Happy Tuesday.

48 thoughts on “Signpost Forest”

  4. That is the true spirit of exploration. Happy to be in a new place but remembering where you came from. Hope all the license plates were expired and not from the vehicles that brought the tourists. Great photos of this attraction Lynette. Allan

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    1. Thank you very much, Allan. I agree. It’s quite large and there are numerous signs from Germany as well. It seems that people plan for this and bring expired plates or sometimes facsimiles of them. As to the road signs … I wouldn’t want to investigate too closely. Many of them have probably just been swiped!

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    1. I agree, Maggie, it is a great story. Carl apparently wasn’t aware that his name was such a part of the area’s history. He knew that the signpost forest had grown, but not how much. As Allan pointed out, it’s always great to remember where you’re from. Cheers.

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    1. Yes, it was a lot of fun, Belinda. 😊 I’m glad you enjoyed it. We didn’t go much deeper into Yukon as our friend is currently living in Watson Lake and we went specifically to see him, so we’re back in B.C. now and headed to Jasper. Cheers.

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    1. It’s unusual, isn’t it? A homesick soldier put up a reminder of his home town and look what happened! It’s interesting to see all the signs – some of them very old and almost completely faded or rotted away – and their origins. Cheers.

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  12. It’s amazing how people join in on ideas like this. And how after a while. Things like this tend to take on a life of their own.

    Wish I could stop there sometime and read through the signs.

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    1. I agree. A homesick soldier started a something that took off and has lasted for 80 years now. There are lots of signs, rows of them, so it would take a long time to see all of them. Many are also very old and worn or beginning to decay, so there’s a sense of the sweep of time. Cheers.

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  18. Such a neat place. We stopped here on our drive along the Alaska Highway towards Kluane a couple of years ago. It was a fun spot to stretch our legs and look at all the signs. The air was pretty smoky from a nearby wildfire when we visited so we didn’t spend as much time looking around as I would have liked.

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    1. Yes, I remember reading about your visit to Kluane. We didn’t go that far north this time as we were in Watson Lake to visit a friend. 2023 was such a terrible year for forest fires in B.C. and across Yukon and NWT, so I’m not surprised that you had to avoid the smoke. You definitely could spend a lot of time at the Signpost Forest just taking a look!

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