Russ Travers
	
Russ Travers was the first Officer in Charge of the Whitehorse Radio Range Station from 1941 to 1945. He came from Swift Current, Saskatchewan which had grown from a small airport to a primary training base for 1,000 young English pilots. He heard about the Northwest Staging Route and applied because his wife's father was a Klondiker and she was enthused about moving to the Yukon. A guidance system for aerial navigation was developed in the 1930s and allowed a pilot to receive a transmitted beam or communicate with a radio on the ground. A radio compass indicated the direction of the transmission and allowed pilots to fly over a trackless or unknown region. Radio ranges were augmented by a device that triggered a light on the plane’s instrument panel to indicate a position directly over a radio range. There were none of these facilities north of Edmonton before the Second World War when they were built to play an important role in the Lend-Lease Program and the construction of the Alaska Highway. Until the telephone wires were strung in 1944, all communication was handled through the aeradio navigation system and that included commercial messages for the thousands of transient workers and all weather reports. The Yukon airstrips and radio ranges were Canada’s contribution to the wartime defense of the northwest. Radio range facilities were constructed at Snag, Aishihik, Whitehorse, Teslin, Swift River and Watson Lake by the Department of Transport (D.O.T.).((Norman Leonard Larson ed., //Radio Waves Across Canada and up the Alaska Highway.// Lethbridge: Lethbridge Historical Society, 1992.))

When Russ arrived in Whitehorse, city lots were $15 and he didn't buy because they had been unsold for 40 years. A year later they went for $500 and a year after that there were no lots available. Larry Nelson was the Officer In Charge when Russ transferred out.((Norman Leonard Larson ed., //Radio Waves Across Canada and up the Alaska Highway.// Lethbridge: Lethbridge Historical Society, 1992.))