Modern Travel
In the early 1920s, portions of the abandoned rail line through Yellowhead Pass became a rough trail for adventurous automobile travellers.
Formal road construction did not begin until the 1940s.
During the Second World War, internees from the Japanese-Canadian internment and conscientious objectors camps laboured on road construction in the Yellowhead Pass and occupied camps in the area.
Sections of the historic Yellowhead road remain in use today as trails and controlled access roads for park operations and to service the railway and utilities. It was not until the late 1960s that the paved Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16) was completed.
"HERITAGE VALUE
The Yellowhead Pass was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1971 because: - it was used for brief periods from the mid-1820s to the 1850s by the Hudson’s Bay Company; and it became part of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern Railway companies’ routes and a major highway crossing through the Rocky Mountains.
This pass was used for centuries by First Nations peoples, from about 1825 to the 1850s by the Hudson’s Bay Company principally to transport leather from the Saskatchewan District to its posts in New Caledonia. After 1906, it was used as a route for the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern railways and in 1942, Japanese-Canadians who had been interned during World War II began automotive roadway work on it.
The pass derives its name from Pierre Bostonais, called “Tete Jaune”, an Iroquois freeman active in the region in the early 19th century. The heritage value of the site resides in its historic associations as illustrated by the landscape and its associated historic resources." Source: Historic Places