Highway built beside her cabin

By Karla Marsh

In 1942, Rose Mould had an unusual occupation for a lady. She was a Trapper.

Rose Mould sitting on the tree trunk with her husband, Tom, standing and Mrs. Moore in the foreground - Photo from the Fort St. John North Peace Museum

Rose and her husband spent their winters harvesting furs and in the spring they travelled to the old Fort Nelson site to take their furs to the trader.

In the spring of 1942, when Rose and her husband were coming in from the trapline, they came across something totally unexpected. It was a road, slashed and bulldozed through the timber, a road that they would one day call the Alaska Highway.

Rose and her husband had planned to return to the trapline that spring, but when they reached Fort Nelson, they found that the American soldiers, who were building the new road, needed a guide to take them towards Lower Post.

Rose’s husband was offered the job, and she spent the summer in Fort Nelson, waiting on tables and helping out at a new little eating place popular with soldiers.

In October, Rose’s husband returned and the army drove them back to their cabin on the trapline. Rose recalls; “They had built the highway right along beside our cabins and about a quarter of a mile away was a big army camp.”

Rose discovered, however, that the axes, snowshoes and other things they had left in their cache (a small storage cabin built up high on poles, so that bears and other animals can’t get at it) had all been taken by the soldiers.

“I walked over to the camp. They all stuck their heads out of the tent. I said, ‘where’s the commanding officer around here?’”

“I told the commanding officer what had happened and he said, ‘I will see that you get it all back.’”

“I got everything back. The soldiers didn’t have any notion of stealing it, they thought it had been there for years.”

“The soldiers were in and out of the cabin, they never saw a woman trapper and they never saw a trapper’s house. One night, I heard an awful noise. Here comes these soldiers.

“They had their arms full of bread and cake from their camp. They wanted to see our little cabin. Then they started to sing and they had a whale of a time. I just stood by the door and listened.”“They wanted me to come up to the camp and have a dance. But there were about 150 guys there, so I wasn’t going to the dance.”