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The Cassiar Hwy starts near Kitwanga, one of several aboriginal villages off Hwy 16 , and a crossroads of the old "grease trail", named after the candlefish oil which was once traded between Coast and Interior peoples. Some hint of the sense of adventure required comes when you hit a section (47km beyond Cranberry Junction), where the road doubles up as an airstrip - planes have right of way. Another 27km on, there's another stretch used as an airstrip in emergencies. Almost immediately after you leave Hwy 16, though, the road pitches into the mesmerizing high scenery of the Coast Ranges, a medley of mountain, lake and forest that reaches a crescendo after about 100km and the side turn to STEWART , Canada's most northerly ice-free port. Here a series of immense glaciers culminates in the dramatic appearance of the unmissable Bear Glacier , a vast sky-blue mass of ice that comes down virtually to the highway and has the strange ability to glow in the dark. Stewart itself, 37km west of the glacier, is a shrivelled mining centre (pop. 2200) that sits at the end of the Portland Canal, the world's fourth longest fjord, a natural boundary between British Columbia and Alaska that lends the town a superb peak-ringed location (the ferry ride in from Prince Rupert through some of the west coast's wildest scenery is sensational). Dominating its rocky amphitheatre is Mount Rainey , whose cliffs represent one of the greatest vertical rises from sea level in the world. Stewart's history , together with that of nearby Hyder , might have marked it out as a regional player were it not quite so remote and apparently doomed to ultimate disappointment in every venture ever tried in the town. In the distant past it was an important trading point, marking the meeting point of territories belonging to the Nisga'a and Gitxsan interior aboriginal peoples to the south, the Thaltan to the north, and the Tsesaut and the Tlingit to the east. Captain George Vancouver, searching for the Northwest Passage in 1793, spoke for many who came after him when, having spent an eternity working his way inland up the Portland Canal, he declared himself "mortified with having devoted so much time to so little purpose". Almost exactly a century later the area welcomed its first settlers: in 1896 Captain Gilliard of the US Army Corps built four storehouses here in Hyder - Alaska's first stone buildings - and Stewart itself was named after two of its earliest settlers (Robert and John Stewart). For a time it looked as if the terminus of the trans-Canadian railway might materialize in Stewart, a hope that brought in 10,000 fortune-seeking pioneers. The railway never came, and Stewart's local line was abandoned after a few kilometres. As slump set in, gold was discovered - almost inevitably - and until 1948, when it closed, the Premier Gold and Silver Mine was North America's largest gold mine. Then came a copper mine, its eighteen-kilometre gallery apparently the longest tunnel ever built by boring from just one end. This closed in 1984, but not before 27 men were killed in a mine accident in 1965. All manner of new mining ventures have since been promised. None have materialized, leaving Stewart's scenery its main money-spinner: visitors and B-movie location scouts alike having been lured by the region's cliffs, mountains and glaciers - the Iceman and The Thing are two of the films to have used the local landscape as a backdrop. Scenery aside, the main thing to see in town is the Stewart Historical Museum housed in the former fire hall at Columbia and 6th Avenue (summer Mon-Fri 1-4pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; or by appointment on tel 636-2568). A fine little provincial museum, its exhibits are devoted largely to stuffed wildlife and the town's logging and mining heritage. You might also want to journey out 5km beyond Hyder in Alaska to Fish Creek, where from the special viewing platform above the artificial spawning channel you may be lucky enough to see black bears catching some of the world's largest chum salmon. Around town there are also a handful of enticing trails, some along old mining roads: for details, contact the infocentre or visit the British Columbia Forest Service (tel 636-2663) office at 8th and Brightwell.
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