Tales of Alaska and the Alaska Highway: Watson Lake Sign Forest

One of our favorite stops along the Alaska Highway is Watson Lake.  We could easily spend hours there looking at the sign forest.  Usually we don't have hours to spend, but on this trip we stayed overnight in Watson Lake, so we had extra time to look.

The sign forest was started in 1942 by a soldier who put up a sign showing the mileage to his hometown.  Now there are more than 75,000 signs from all over the world.  Some of the pictures were taken on a whim and others had a reason.

There are rows and rows of these posts.

Someone even made a sign out of a bedpan.

This one is here because I have been to Aachen...only 7065 km away.

Found a sign of an Alaska license plate that says Wasilla on it.

In the middle of the sign forest were several pieces of old equipment.  I think, judging from the tree growing in the middle of it, that this thing hasn't been used for a few years.

Here is for the Longmont, CO, folks in the family.

This sign is inside the visitor center and tells about the placing of the first sign.

This has a little sign that says 'Roma'.

Olathe, KS, appears on this post.

If you want to put up your sign when you visit Watson Lake, they will even loan you a hammer and a couple of nails, but you have to find your own spot to nail it.