NoneCA 🇨🇦 Closed Airport
CA-0401
-
- ft
CA-AB
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Loading...GPS Code: Not available
Local Code: Not available
Location: 57.766666° N, -115.449997° E
Continent: NA
Type: Closed Airport
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The exact date of closure is not officially documented in public records, but it is estimated to have been decommissioned in the late 1990s or early 2000s. The airstrip was likely abandoned gradually as its operational need diminished, a common fate for many similar remote airfields in Alberta during that period.
The closure was primarily due to technological and strategic obsolescence in wildfire management. The airstrip's main purpose was to support the nearby Wadlin Lake Fire Lookout Tower. The Alberta Forest Service (now Alberta Wildfire) shifted its strategy away from a dense network of fixed fire towers and their supporting fixed-wing aircraft. The increasing use of more versatile helicopters, which do not require prepared runways, and the advent of more advanced aerial and satellite-based fire detection methods rendered many remote tower airstrips like this one redundant and economically unviable to maintain.
The site is abandoned and is being reclaimed by nature. Satellite imagery clearly shows the faint outline of a single north-south runway, but it is heavily overgrown with grass, shrubs, and small trees, making it completely unusable for any type of aircraft. There are no remaining buildings or infrastructure visible on the site. It exists today only as a clearing in the forest, a remnant of its past use.
Wadlin Tower Airport was a small, unpaved airstrip with local, operational significance. It was an integral part of Alberta's wildfire detection and suppression infrastructure for several decades. Its primary role was to facilitate the transport of personnel (lookout observers) and supplies to and from the Wadlin Lake Fire Lookout Tower. It also served as a forward operating base for small, single-engine patrol aircraft (like the Cessna 185 or de Havilland Beaver) conducting fire patrols over the vast, remote boreal forest in the region. The airport was part of a large network of similar airstrips built across northern Alberta to support the province's forestry and fire-fighting efforts before the widespread adoption of helicopters.
There are no known plans or prospects for reopening Wadlin Tower Airport. The original purpose for its existence is now obsolete. Given its remote location, the lack of any nearby communities or industrial activity, and the significant cost required to clear, restore, and certify the runway and facilities, there is no economic or logistical justification for its reactivation.