On our drive up to Alaska through Canada, we made a quick diversion to Watson Lake in the Yukon. That’s because it’s home to the super-quirky Sign Post Forest.
The Sign Post Forest features ~100,000 different signs of many varieties that travelers along the Alaska Highway have left over the last 80+ years.
It truly is a sight to behold!
The tradition began in 1942 when Carl Lindley – a US soldier who was recuperating in Watson Lake – was tasked with fixing directional signposts and putting up new ones. While doing this, he contributed his own sign pointing to Danville, IL (his home town), along with the mileage to that city.
Similarly homesick soldiers seemed to enjoy that idea, so they added their own signs for their own home towns. That tradition continues to today which has resulted in this forest of sign posts, with an average of ~25 signs being added every week for more than 80 years.
Here’s a video of me walking through just part of the Sign Post Forest to give a sense of its scale:
We’d heard of the Sign Post Forest ahead of time which is why we’d added it to our route that day as we drove from Jade City to Whitehorse. However, we hadn’t done any research into it ahead of time, so we ended up being a little disappointed that we hadn’t ordered a No Home Just Roam sign to install on one of the posts ourselves.
Shae and I therefore decided to do something about that. Knowing that we’d be driving back down to the lower 48 from Alaska in early July and so could stop in Watson Lake again, we designed a No Home Just Roam sign online and had it shipped to an Office Depot store in Anchorage for us to pick up.
We didn’t have a hammer and nails, but that doesn’t matter if you want to put up your own sign. Just stop by the Watson Lake Visitor Centre which is next to the Sign Post Forest.
They’ll hook you up with what you need to attach your sign to one of the posts – provided you can find space!
It certainly wasn’t the largest sign, but I feel like ours was one of the most vibrant looking ones thanks to its coloring.
If you’re driving the Alaska Highway, Watson Lake is definitely worth a stop for this quirky and massive roadside attraction.
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