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Dawson Creek is a small city in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. It covers an area of 20.66 square kilometres (7.98 sq mi) in the dry and windy prairie land of the Peace River Country. The city is in the British Columbia Peace Lowland ecosection of the Canadian Boreal Plains ecozone on the continental Interior Platform. Located in the Cordillera Climatic Region, it lies at the southern end of a subarctic climate. The 1941 census, the first to include Dawson Creek as a defined subdivision, counted 518 residents. In 2011 the city had a population of 11,583. Growth slowed in the 1960s, with the population reaching its all-time high in 1966, although since 1992 the city has grown and undergone several boundary expansions. Dubbed "The Capital of the Peace", it is a service centre for the rural areas south of the Peace River and the seat of the Peace River Regional District. Once a small farming community, Dawson Creek became a regional centre when the western terminus of the Northern Alberta Railways was extended there in 1932. The community grew rapidly in 1942 as the US Army used the rail terminus as a transshipment point during construction of the Alaska Highway. In the 1950s the city was connected to the interior of British Columbia via a highway and railway through the Rocky Mountains.