The family moved to Fort St. John, where Howard got a job as a mechanical superintendent. Howard became frustrated by the lack of initiative at the company where he worked and took two weeks off to go hunting in the Buckinghorse area. Two months later, the Shannons were co-owners of a lodge. “I wasn’t looking for anything at the time,” Howard says. “It was a pretty good job, I was making eighty thousand a year. My dad thought I was absolutely out of my mind when we bought it.”
Some people might say that Howard is a person comfortable with taking risks: in the 1970s, he was a drag racer, building and racing his own cars. “I probably spent the price of three homes doing that,” Howard says. “I was an addicted drag racer—I spent almost all my waking hours doing that.” This addiction led to temporary separation from Vel. Once Howard gave up the cars, the couple reconciled and have been together ever since.
The Shannons have two sons who live on the property with them. In fact, of the ten to twelve people who work and live there, only one is not a family member. “We have a cook, she’s from Prince George. She’s been with us for twelve years.”
The dining room at Buckinghorse River Lodge is an old US Army barrack.
Howard describes Buckinghorse River Lodge as a seventeen-year reno project. The previous owners had the property for ten years, but it needed numerous upgrades. “The first thing we had to do was the water—two people couldn’t have a shower at the same time, and the water was this colour,” Howard says, pointing to the brown tabletop. “It’s a well system—it wasn’t treated or filtered or anything. Just raw water right out of the well.” Then there was the electrical. “Whoever was here had no idea what the hell they were doing,” Howard says. “They never fixed any outlets, just ran one extension cord to another one—I took fifteen or sixteen extension cords out in the first month.” Then the single-pane windows needed to be replaced. “When they built these old places they didn’t worry about the cold, they just put more wood on the fire.”
The Shannons are conscientious about conserving energy and have considered solar and wind power, but installing the infrastructure is too costly. As at most lodges along the highway, the power is supplied by two diesel generators. These are kept securely in steel shipping containers with fire walls built in at either end. The Shannons have good reason to house their generators in a near fortress-like building. Since 1999, they’ve had two generator fires; the first was in 2005. “That cost us just about half a million dollars in equipment, supplies, generators, fuel tanks, lawn mowers, quads,” Howard says. “There was a fifty-by-eighty-foot shop and I lost three generators.” They had been storing building supplies for renovations and lost all of those. “Doors, toilets, windows, sinks. We’ve never really recovered from that.” The second fire was in 2014, and that time the generator was brand new. Again, the family lost everything at a quarter-of-a-million-dollar cost. “The last fire I almost quit, but I just couldn’t.”
The Buckinghorse River Lodge’s history begins decades before the Shannons’ ownership (and generator troubles). The site of Buckinghorse River Lodge was a river crossing on the pack trail between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John, and in 1935, Wes Brown, a hunting-guide outfitter, and his family built a hunting lodge on the bank of the river. During the construction of the highway, the US Army used the site as a camp. The lodge at that time was on the east side of the highway, and to accommodate the fly-out hunting trips, an airstrip was built where the present-day parking lot now lies.
The lodge’s years on the east side of the highway were the busiest time in the business’s history. There was a restaurant, a liquor store, a gas station and rooms for rent. Wes moved what is now the lodge dining room, and an original US Army barracks with its coveted fir flooring, to the west side of the highway to use for his guiding business.
The Shannons have never guided any hunting trips out of their lodge, and they’ve had their busy and their slow times. As with many of their highway neighbours, the oil and gas industry contributed to the busy times. A camp was built on the east side of the highway in 2004, which operated for eleven years. “Everything slowed up here two years ago,” Howard says. “It’s been pretty quiet since. There’s virtually no activity in the oil field–related stuff—basically the operator just looks after the infrastructure.” The slowdown in the oil and gas sector is reflected in the Shannon’s business, as they figure they are doing 40 percent less than they used to.
Fire has been the death knell for many Alaska Highway lodges. Buckinghorse River Lodge has survived two generator fires since 2006 and the cost of the fires has taken a financial toll on Vel and Howard Shannon.
However, the decision to put the twenty-four-hectare (sixty-acre) property up for sale two years ago was not because of the slowdown in business but rather a completely unrelated event. In 2008, Vel and Howard were in a car accident in Prince George that left Vel with a broken back and five broken ribs. “Her internal organs aren’t where they are supposed to be,” Howard says. “She’s getting to the point where she needs more medical attention.” That attention is a two-and-a-half-hour drive south. Howard also admits that at sixty-eight years old, he’s getting to the age where the work of maintaining the lodge is not as easy for him as it once was.
The Shannons keep their business open year round, which is easy for them since they live on the premises. “It’s a lifestyle for us, too, basically,” Howard says. “My wife says it’s like camping out all the time.”
The Shannons have played host to several celebrities, notably a grizzly bear who’s graced the silver screen: Little Bart, the bear you may have seen in Into the Wild. (Little Bart is eight-foot-one-inch tall and should not be confused with Bart the Bear, who was nine foot six and appeared in Legends of the Fall. Both bears were trained by well-known Utah-based animal trainer Doug Seus.)
“They were filming in Alaska and were bringing him down.” When the trailer transporting the bear pulled into Buckinghorse River Lodge, it was having trouble with the shower system to keep the animal cool. “They are out there spraying the trailer and I started giving him shit. Then I saw the bear and said, ‘If he’s hot then you’d better cool him down.’” The handler let Howard touch the bear. “He was massive—that bear stood about damn near five feet at the shoulders.”
Once the Shannons sell the lodge, they’ll hit the road. Their final destination will be southern British Columbia, where they have family, but first, they’ll head north. The farthest north on the Alaska Highway that Vel and Howard have been is Mile 351 Steamboat. “We’ll stop at Liard, and I’ve always wanted to go to Skagway and take the train,” Howard says.
Mile 200 Trutch Lodge
You can’t see the Trutch Mountain section—the highway now skirts around it—but it lives on in early highway stories as a sometimes impassable incline, and a treacherous decline. The remains of Mile 200 Trutch Lodge exist deep in the woods, a sketch of the business that—from 1950 to 1963—was run by Don and Alene Peck. An old guidebook states the lodge was at Mile 201, whereas Ross Peck, son of Don and Alene, says it was at Mile 200. There was a highway maintenance camp at Mile 201, which is most likely what the guidebook was referring to.
This property inventory accompanied the bill of sale for Trutch Lodge, which Don and Alene Peck ran for thirteen years. The list includes everything from a chain hoist to hose clamps to a water barrel.
Photo courtesy of Ross Peck.
Ross, who is a retired guide outfitter and a rancher living in Hudson’s Hope, recalls that there were a few “Trutches” close to his parents’ lodge: “Somewhere in there, another lodge came into existence at Mile 195, which