'It's very historic': Grande Prairie Museum gifted old fire lookout tower

A fire lookout is carefully place on the ground so the crew can remove the remaining frame at the Alberta Forestry offices in Grande Prairie, Alta. on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. The fire lookout tower will now be part of the Grande Prairie Museums collection and will help inform people of forestry operations in the area. (Jesse Boily)

The Grande Prairie Museum has added another building to its historic village.

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A fire lookout tower was relocated there from the Grande Prairie Alberta Forestry offices near 84 Avenue and 108 Street on Sept. 30. 

"It’s very historic; it will help us tell the story of forestry in Alberta," said Charles Taws, Grande Prairie museum curator.

"The museum does have a small forestry section and we'd like to have forestry represented in a larger way."

The tower was in disrepair, and Alberta Forestry offered it to the museum.

"This has been a project that we've been working on for a while with the Grande Prairie Museum and the Peace Historical Society, and also with the Forest History Society of Alberta," said Kelly Burke, Alberta Wildfire information co-ordinator for the Grande Prairie Forest Area.

"We've been working with them for about 10 years, helping them put together a forestry display for the museum, and I think this is really exciting today because we're going to be linking the past with future generations, but also strengthening our partnerships with the community."

Burke said it was not the first time the tower had been moved.

It was once used for training at Northwestern Polytechnic, formerly Grande Prairie Regional College, and was moved by helicopter sometime in the 70s or early 80s.

"It was never really a forestry tower but a training tower that they used to train tower people when they came before this season started," she said.

Last week, a crew sawed the lookout portion from its wooden frame, which had rotted, to transport it to the museum.

"Hopefully next year, we'll work on a plan about getting it mounted on a smaller tower, and it'll be kind of a thing that people can crawl up into and get the feel of what a forestry tower is like," said Taws.

Fire lookout towers are still used today. In the Grande Prairie Forest Area, there are eight, down from 10 due to fires over the past year, said Burke.

No replacement for human eyes

Burke noted cameras can have difficulty telling the difference between dust and smoke, and having people up in towers is an integral part of wildfire detection in Alberta.

The towers of today are built with steel frames that rise 30 metres above the forest, while others in different areas of the province sit atop mountains.

Inside the towers there will often be an Osborne Fire Finder, a tool to help precisely locate where fire or smoke is coming from.

The museum’s lookout does not have one, but it is something the museum is looking to add and Alberta WIldfire is willing to help.

"The tower people - and it was both men and women - often did other things when they were up there," said Pat Wearmouth, a retired forester.

"They knew their primary job was to look out for smoke, but if they're up there and had a little bit of time, I know that Bob (Robert) Guest, the Beaverlodge artist, used to take his paints and his brushes up in a bucket, or at least a sketch pad, and he'd work on projects."

"You got to stay awake, and you got to keep your mind active so that when you look out, you're focused," Wearmouth said.

Wearmouth believes the tower, now in the museum, was always used for training.

He noted it was important to get tower people comfortable in the place they would spend hours in every day, iconic sentinels on the lookout for fire danger.

"I think this thing was built to teach people how to get up and down safely, how to use the Osborne Fire Finder equipment, and how to use the radio system to talk to the fire control central offices," said Wearmouth.

Alberta Wildfire says fire lookouts discover about 40 per cent of fires annually, and each tower covers an area of about 5,027 square kilometres.