The phrase was coined during a vigil held in Terrace, British Columbia in 1998, by Florence Naziel, who was thinking of the victims' families crying over their loved ones.

[2][3][4][5] Poverty in particular leads to low rates of vehicle ownership and mobility; thus, hitchhiking is often the only way for many to travel vast distances to see family or go to work, school, or seek medical treatment.

[197] However, the list of cases as it existed back then included three additional male victims – Larry Vu, Eric Charles Coss, and Phillip Innes Fraser.

It is possible that Fowler was linked to the Highway of Tears cases because he worked for a now closed Prince George company called Happy's Roofing in 1974, which was the same year that Monica Ignas went missing in Terrace, BC.

[200] In 2009, police converged on a property in Isle Pierre, in rural Prince George, to search for the remains of Nicole Hoar, a young tree planter who went missing on Highway 16 on June 21, 2002.

The property was once owned by Leland "Chuggy" Vincent Switzer, who served a prison sentence for the second-degree murder of his brother and is out on day parole as of late 2016.

[204] Denham became aware of the scandal in May 2015 after she received a letter from Tim Duncan, the former executive assistant to Transportation Minister Todd Stone.

[206] A year earlier in the summer of 2014, a team from the Transportation Ministry toured Highway 16 and conducted numerous meetings with Aboriginal leaders and communities.

In November 2014, the NDP made the FOI request seeking all government files pertaining to missing women, the Highway of Tears and meetings arranged by the ministry: the report Duncan would later respond to.

[209] In 2005, the RCMP launched a provincially funded project, E-Pana, which started with a focus on some of the unsolved murders and disappearances of female children and young women along Highway 16.

[211] E-Pana is responsible for linking the homicide of 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen, who was killed in 1974, with the now-deceased American criminal Bobby Jack Fowler.

[213] In 2014, investigations by E-Pana and the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit brought murder charges against Garry Taylor Handlen for the death of 12-year-old Monica Jack in 1978.

Gladys Radek, a native activist and the aunt of victim Tamara Chipman, "believes that if it weren't for Hoar, the police would have invested less effort in investigating cases, and the media would have done little, if anything, to inform the public about the tragedies along the road.

[221][222] The rural region is plagued with poverty and lacks public transportation; many residents turn to hitchhiking as a form of transit or partake in high risk lifestyles to survive.

[223] Poverty and a lack of public transit has forced many disadvantaged Aboriginal women to turn to hitchhiking as a cheap means of transportation along Highway 16.

[38] In March 2006, various Aboriginal groups hosted a two-day Highway of Tears symposium at the CN Center in Prince George.

[226] In June 2016, Transportation Minister Todd Stone announced that as the result of collaboration across local communities, a bus service would become available along Highway 16.

[227] In June 2017, a subsidized transit service began operations on alternating days along a 400 kilometres (250 mi) section between Prince George and Burns Lake.