Pomeroy Hotel popular with U.S. soldiers

By Karla Marsh Special to the AHN

What was Fort St. John like in 1942?

Ralph Pomeroy is pictured with John Quelle. (Photos courtesy of the Fort St. John North Peace Museum)

It was a little like a scene from an old western movie.

It's dirt streets were bordered by wooden sidewalks, and hitching posts still kept horses from wandering, while locals did their business at the bank, the general stores or the trading post.

You could say that it was a sleepy frontier town, but it awoke suddenly with the building of the Alaska Highway and the arrival of thousands of soldiers from south of the border. This brought on one of Fort St. John's very first booms.

Ralph Pomeroy, who would one day serve three terms as mayor of this fair city, remembers those days well. He owned a hotel on main street.

Ralph Pomeroy is pictured with Agnes Pomeroy. (Photos courtesy of the Fort St. John North Peace Museum)

The Pomeroy Hotel had 20 rooms, a bar and a dining room and was a favorite watering hole for the locals.

The American soldiers would sometimes spend a night or two at the hotel, but by and large they too came to the Pomeroy for a few drinks.

Keeping the brew flowing was a bit of a challenge in 1942.

Beer was rationed during the war and Ralph had to have a supply trucked up from Pouce Coupe, 50 miles away.

Like a hotel bar in any frontier town, it was not unknown for an occasional fight to erupt in the Pomeroy.

According to Ralph, it was mostly the soldiers squabbling amongst themselves that caused fights, but once in a while a spat would involve the locals too.

If a dispute didn't settle quickly, the town lawman had to be called in. That's just what happened one particular night, when things got a little out of hand.

Unfortunately, the lawman who arrived on the scene to break up the fight ended up breaking something else. In the performance of his duty, he slipped in a pool of beer and fractured his ankle!

Main street didn't provide all of the business opportunities during the highway building boom. Ralph had another very different enterprise.

He contracted out trucks with drivers to haul out timber for telephone poles, from the bush near Charlie Lake.

In time, the hitching posts and the wooden sidewalks disappeared and the dusty streets gave way to pavement.

Fort St. John the frontier town faded rapidly into a modern city.