Description of Historic Place

Windy Joe Lookout is a solitary wood frame fire lookout station located in a subalpine clearing at the peak of Windy Joe Mountain in E.C. Manning Provincial Park in southwestern British Columbia. The lookout has been decommissioned.

Heritage Value

Windy Joe Lookout is significant for the scientific, cultural, and aesthetic values of the building and its surrounding landscape, and for its name.

Located on the subalpine peak of Windy Joe Mountain with views in all directions, the fire lookout is important for conveying the past importance of the fire-watching function of the BC Forest Service in the Cascade Range, part of its mandate to manage the forests of the wilderness by limiting the spread of natural and man-made fires.

Windy Joe Fire Lookout is important physically for its architectural form and its glass-walled observation rooms situated on two levels, which were integral to the original function of the building as a lookout.

By virtue of the site being a relatively easy hike from the main recreational facilities, Windy Joe Fire Lookout is important for its relative accessibility to the public, making it at one time an interpretive site for the public as well as a functioning lookout, and now a welcome hut for hikers and skiers. It is important for its culturally modified landscape, complete with trees cleared in the mid-20th century in order to afford clear views of the surrounding mountain slopes from the observation rooms. The site has high recreational value as a hiking trail destination.

The name 'Windy Joe' is important for its reference to a modern-day pioneer in the area: Joseph Hilton, one of the park's first Park Rangers, who held and passed along the trapping rights for an area that includes E. C. Manning Provincial Park.

Source: Ministry of Environment, BC Parks

Character-Defining Elements

Key character-defining elements of Windy Joe Lookout include:

Site:
-name 'Windy Joe'
-setting on cleared subalpine peak
-day-hike distance from base of mountain
-views in all directions

Building:
-simple pyramidal main and upper roof forms
-wood frame construction
-glass-walled observation rooms on two floors