In March 1950, using funds supplied by the US Government, Canadian crews began construction of a radar site at Chilanko Forks. It is interesting to note here, as an aside, that the land used was acquired from Alvis Knolls Chilanko Ranch under circumstances that resulted in claims which were not settled until late 1959. The base itself, however, was accepted by the USAF in 1952 and it became operational in July of that same year. Known as the Puntzi Mountain base, in keeping with an airforce tradition which resulted in many stations being named after local mountains, the facility was staffed by a new squadron, specially created for it and designated the 917th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron of the USAF. Activated on the 16th of April, 1952 at Geiger Field in Washington the squadron was attached to the Western Air Defence Force at the Air Defence Command. Although called a squadron, the unit was comprised mostly of radar, support and maintenance personnel. Their only aircraft was a Beaver Norseman. The squadron was ordered to Puntzi Mountain, British Columbia on the 8th of November, 1952.
By this date a 5,900 foot asphalt runway and many support and operations buildings had been constructed. The base eventually came to employ seventy-five military and forty-seven civilian personnel (1966) and, in time, a number of these people moved their families into the area as well. The base itself included two separate operations areas, comprised of a total of fifteen buildings, and one domestic site, which contained forty-three buildings. Enclosed within a restricted perimeter broken only by a single road which ran past a guard/gate house complete with a cell, the installation began quietly probing the skies with its, then, sophisticated radar equipment.
The upshot of all this activity for local education was that at this time there began to grow up, along the two kilometer access road which ran from the Chilcotin Highway to the Base, a small community. In little houses, some built from scratch, and some created largely out of construction sheds salvaged from the building of the base itself, an orderly community came into being and began to go about its domestic business. Attractively painted homes, with heating oil and electric power supplied by the USAF formed the nucleus of a small community housing increasing numbers of civilian support workers - workers who had children of school age.
The 1954-1955 school year saw the increasing need for a local school and citizens met for the first time. In a local house, overlooking a meadow, School District #82 (Chilcotin) - itself created that year to meet this, and other needs - operated one of its five small schools. With twelve students registered in grades ranging from two to seven, Puntzi Mountain School went into service.
Milton Law, now the proprietor of the areas only service station, was a student in this makeshift facility in 1956. He clearly remembers his teachers name as well as looking through the window and watching the moose feed in the bush below the school. Despite having such a charming view, however, this initial site was actually only used for a very short while.
Best remembered as the Robertson House, this building served as a school only until 1957 when the construction of a new facility a short distance away, and on the other side of the access road, was completed. Unfortunately, the original Puntzi Mountain School building was destroyed by fire.
When the new facility opened in September 1957 it boasted two portable classrooms and a playing field. Among its students could be found the children of both civilian and US Air Force personnel as well as some children from local ranches. It is interesting to note that the full cost of the tuition of the American children, $15.00 a month by 1963, was borne by the USAF through a series of transfer payments which eventually found their way to the School District, and not by local taxpayers.
Over the next few years the school experienced slow, but steady, growth. In 1963, after eleven years of being manned by United States personnel, eight years after the founding of the school, the radar site was transferred from American to Canadian control. Consequently, on February 1st of that year, the last American was replaced and the RCAF began its tenure in the area. Under the Canadians, the squadron was re-numbered 55, the lone Beaver Norseman was replaced by a single Otter aircraft, more civilian personnel were brought in and the school grew even further.
This growth was further fueled over the next few years by the communitys brief flirtation with the forest industry and the influx of personnel which that particular activity brought to the area. Beginning in 1963, the ranks of the community had been somewhat bolstered by the arrival of loggers and mill workers brought in by Pinnette and Therrien of Williams Lake. Logging began around Puntzi Lake, a few kilometers to the east of the radar station, and a portable mill was used throughout the area. Eventually sited at the extreme eastern end of the lake, the operation ran until August 1964 when it relocated to a spot about fifty kilometers back north into the bush as Chezacut.
Following a particularly sever winter, with temperatures as extreme as 70 degrees F below zero, Pinnette and Therrien transferred their operation back to Chilanko Forks. With this move came an influx of wives and children and the school absorbed the increases. The mill was now situated at the junction of the old highway and the base access road near Skinner Bridge (a name which has since evolved into Skinny Bridge - even though the bridge itself no longer exists). Relocation was undertaken in March 1965. It was at this time that Pinnette and Therrien phased out its logging operation in the area in favour of contracting the work to Illnicki Logging of Williams Lake. In 1966 a planer mill was added to the operation and, with about twenty-seven Pinnette and Therrien employees and about ten men working for the Illnickis, the community had a very strong base.
The September of 1966 was a momentous one for the Puntzi Mountain School. It heralded the year in which the school would house the greatest number of students in its history, reaching, by Christmas, 125 - a number never equaled since. That September also marked the beginning, for this school, of the integration of Natives with non-Natives. The influx of twenty-three students belonging to the Alexis Creek Indian Band caused the School District to expand the school to a complex of four portable buildings, each with its own teacher assigned to it. At this point, with students belonging to Canadian Airforce personnel, civilian support staff, loggers, millworkers, ranchers and Natives, the school reached its population zenith - but the view from the peak lasted only a short while.
Disaster was quick to strike. At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of 30th of September, while a student group was on a fieldtrip up in the radar operations centre at the top of Puntzi Mountain, an area about thirteen kilometers from the school site, a message came in advising the base commander that as of 4:59 p.m. that evening, RCAF Station Puntzi Mountain was officially closed. The students were on the scene when the news arrived and they returned to their homes that afternoon with the information. The closure was not expected and the community was shocked.
Almost immediately, and for many subsequent weeks thereafter, an early morning arrival of a transport aircraft served as a visible, and audible, reminder to the community that a slow dismantling of the base, and therefore of the community itself, was underway.
A majority of the electronic mechanisms used at the site were apparently transferred to Redbluff in California, and when no agencies of the Canadian or BC governments could be persuaded to take over the bases buildings for use by such groups as the RCMP, Medical Services, the Department of Highways or Meteorological Service, the base was, in time, systematically destroyed.
A very few buildings survived the razing. The mobile equipment garage was left standing, destined to become a community hall for those who remained in the area. The guard/gate house, which went into service as a pump house, was left intact and the domestic site water distribution system was left undisturbed. It, in fact, still delivers water to a number of houses even now. Of the remainder of the facility only the operations site telephone exchange building, the runway, the rifle-range and the golf course remain today. Flattened and cleared area are, along with storm sewer manhole access points and the odd bit of ancient pavement, the only other signs left to mark the location of the installation - but through it all the school, and community, tenaciously clung to life.
Prior to the razing, though, came the final abandonment of the base on December 31st, 1966. At this time, naturally, it ceased to provide electric power to the community and the school. Fortunately for those who remained, Pinnette and Therrien had had several months to prepare for this moment and they stepped in and filled the need, having strung power lines from the mills site just for this purpose. The school, which had closed for the Christmas holidays with four rooms, four teachers and 125 students, met the dawning of 1967 with two rooms, two teachers and fifty students.
NOTE: The detailed provided above is an extract from a document entitled Radar, Skidders and the Indians - The Life and Times of Puntzi Mountain School. It was produced by the Puntzi Mountain School District No. 27 in 1989 and was submitted as material for the Pinetree Line web site in May 1998 by Lorraine James. We have extracted those portions which provide some detail about the radar station at Puntzi Mountain.