The Crowsnest Highway is an east-west highway in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. It stretches across the southern portions of both provinces, from Hope, British Columbia to Medicine Hat, Alberta, providing the shortest highway connection between the Lower Mainland and southeast Alberta through the Canadian Rockies. Mostly two-lane, the highway was officially designated in 1932, mainly following a mid-19th-century gold rush trail originally traced out by an engineer named Edgar Dewdney. It takes its name "Crowsnest" from the Crowsnest Pass, the location at which the highway crosses the Continental Divide between British Columbia and Alberta.

In British Columbia, the highway is entirely in mountainous regions and is also known as the Southern Trans-Provincial Highway. The western-most segment between the Trans-Canada Highway and Highway 5A is locally known as the Hope–Princeton Highway, and passes by the site of the Hope Slide. In Alberta, the terrain is initially mountainous, before smoothing to foothills and eventually generally flat prairie in the vicinity of Pincher Creek. The highway forms part of the Red Coat Trail and the CANAMEX Corridor from Highway 2 near Fort Macleod to Highway 4 in Lethbridge. Many sections of the highway were built by Japanese labour while they were interned during the Second World War, including sections like the Hope-Princeton. This history has been preserved at a heritage marker at Sunshine Valley, which was the largest internment camp in Canada.

Route description

Crowsnest Highway is designated a core route in Canada's National Highway System, and is designated as Highway 3 for its entire length.

British Columbia

thumb|left|The peak of Allison Pass.

The Crowsnest Highway's western terminus is at Hope, where it branches off from the Trans-Canada Highway (British Columbia Highway 1). The highway goes east for to its junction with the Coquihalla Highway (Highway 5), where it exits the freeway and continues for on a segment known as the Hope–Princeton Highway, passing the Hope Slide en route to Allison Pass, Manning Provincial Park, and Sunday Summit; at Princeton, the Crowsnest Highway meets Highway 5A. Within Taber, Highway 36 runs concurrently with Highway 3 for . The highway reduces to a two-lane undivided road and the Crowsnest Highway ends later at the Trans-Canada Highway (Alberta Highway 1) in Medicine Hat.

Future

Alberta Transportation has long-term plans to upgrade the entire Highway 3 corridor to a freeway from the British Columbia border to Medicine Hat. The route would split from Highway 3 west of Coalhurst and run east, bypassing Lethbridge and Coaldale to the north before rejoining the existing highway. During the period when it was the only road route between Metro Vancouver and the rest of Canada, it experienced a high rate of crashes among heavy trucks driving faster than the route's windy curves would allow for.

Major intersections

The following is a list of major intersections along the Crowsnest Highway:

See also

  • CANAMEX Corridor
  • Dewdney Trail
  • Kettle Valley Railway (southern mainline of the CPR)
  • Pan-American Highway
  • Red Coat Trail
  • Yellowhead Highway

References

  • Crowsnest Highway