Vintage Photographs of Park and Game Wardens

I’ve been fascinated with the National Parks Warden Service for years. They’ve been the topic of several stories, including my years long search for one of Bill Peyto’s mysterious cabins and they were profiled in my running series on Wild Jobs. For this post I opted to share some historical pictures of both Park and Game Wardens from Canada’s west. I felt the following blurb, which I penned for the aforementioned Wild Jobs story, is a fitting intro to these guardians of the wild.

The Warden Service has been in existence for over a century. The person first appointed to the role of warden (known as Forest Rangers at the time) was John Connor, back in 1887. In those early days their main concerns were with fire suppression and game management. Over twenty years later, in 1909, the warden service was officially realized by the Department of the Interior. Permanent positions were created, luring some of the most famous characters the warden service ever produced, such as ‘Wild’ Bill Peyto. As tourism in Canada’s west increased, so too did the responsibilities of the wardens. Search and rescue became more apparent, as did trail building and maintenance. A series of backcountry cabins were erected to assist on those long patrols searching for illegal hunters and poachers. Even public relations became more commonplace. Park and Game Wardens were a remarkably knowledgeable bunch, so visitors turned to them for their expertise of the natural world. Today, law enforcement plays a substantial role in the duties of Park Wardens, and an increasing amount of their time is spent in the park’s most frequented locales, instead of those sought-after remote confines. Although the job description has repeatedly changed, they are still the guardians of our wildest places.

The photos above were collected from the Glenbow Archives and the Provincial Archives of Alberta. If you’re interested, additional information can be found for each photograph on the Glenbow website by searching the identification number that is printed on the photo. There is also the option to purchase a high resolution copy. If you search the object number that can be found in the photo captions, you will find additional information about the photographs on the Provincial Archives website. Stay tuned for additional posts featuring historical photos from across Alberta. We’d love to know what you think in the comment section below.