New phone app aims to turn travellers on to northern Alberta
Road trip!
A new mobile phone app that highlights historical hotspots in northern Alberta is set to launch this spring, just in time to make your summer vacation plans.
The Friends of Historical Northern Alberta Society has developed the app to provide stories, history and practical travel tips for northern Alberta.
"There is so much up here," Sheila Willis, the group's executive director, told Edmonton AM's Mark Connolly on Monday.
"Fort Vermilion is actually older than Edmonton," Willis said. "This is where Alberta began."
Willis is from Smith, Alta., and said the map-based app will include points of interest like Fawcett Lake Provincial Park, which was home to a German POW camp during the Second World War. She said the app will point out that Fawcett Lake is also a great place to camp.
"We're going through a couple centuries of stories here, plus Indigenous stories as well."
The app will also have practical travel details, like where to fuel up.
Willis said she knows people in motor homes who have decided to forego a trip up Highway 88 to Fort Vermillion "because they didn't know if they could get gas. So we'll have the gas stations on there, so it makes travelling in this very large region so much easier."
Businesses and visitor centres are being asked to add their information to the History Check app, which is set to launch in June.
