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Early Alaska Highway Postcards



An Explorer's Guide to the Alaska Highway

    The Alaska Highway has been a popular subject for postcards since it was built. Initially the intended market was primarily people who worked on the highway or who lived in the region it passed through, and later, travellers on the highway provided the market.

    On the 3 pages linked below, over 50 postcards from the ExploreNorth collection are shown. Click on each image to go to the described page.



Alaska Highway postcard, 1943-44
Provincial News: This set of 12 postcards was the first mass-produced set of postcards showing the Alaska Highway as it was being built in 1942-43. They were distributed (and probably printed) by the Provincial News Company of Edmonton, Alberta. Unlike later "real photo" postcards of the Alaska Highway, these were printed in a conventional manner, with tiny dots of ink.

Alaska Highway postcard, 1943-44
AZO "Real Photo": This set of 42 postcards was the most successful of early postcard series, at least partly because of the high quality. The stamp box on the reverse of all of the postcards in this large set show that they are real photos, printed on Eastman Kodak silver chloride paper known as AZO paper - this stamp box design was used until 1949.

Alaska Highway postcard, 1943-44 Miscellaneous: These postcards are from unknown printers/distributors and/or in very small sets.