Margaret Campbell, a nurse in northern Alberta, visited her sister in Beaverlodge in the summer of 1938. While there, she took a trip across the Monkman Pass on the newly minted Highway. It is our good fortune that this lady (my mother) collected the newspaper clippings, pamphlet and other memorabalia and saved it all in her scrapbook. All these items have made possible this particular memory of the Monkman Pass Project.

It was an amazing project, too: a dream of opening the Peace River Region to the world through the Monkman Pass. Because it was the 1930s, and there were plenty of men who would work for food and lodging, and because the settlers of that area were - indeed - pioneers, a road was built. If it was rough and not to standard, it is also true that no other government or association has matched the result those people attained, on their own, back in the Depression.

You will note that within a year of Margaret Campbell's trip over the Monkman Pass, Canada was at war: the men left for other fields and other jobs, and the Monkman Pass Highway dream remained just that, a dream.

And here is a transcription of her diary of her trip:

Note that the rest of this story of the Monkman Pass Project is a transcription of a pamphlet produced by the MPHA, "promoting the non-ferry connection link on the coast-to-coast highway through the great Peace River Country"