CyArk Receives First Arctic Heritage Site

SarPoint Engineering Ltd. Donates Data from Fort Conger to Archive

by Jaime Pursuit
March 29, 2013
In 1881 Fort Conger was established on Canada's northern Ellesmere Island during the first northern polar scientific expedition. The Fort was funded by the US Government and was therefore named after US Senator Omar D. Conger, who had supported the expedition. 110 years later, in 1991, the Peary shelters at Fort Conger were designated as a classified federal heritage buildings.

Today this historic site is uninhabited, and a visit to Fort Conger remains no easy task. Surrounded by rugged cliffs and a facing a harbor full of drifting ice floes, if you decide to brave the trek to Latitude 81.716667 … make sure to bring your parka! Though be warned, as during his 1899 expedition to reach the geographic North Pole, Robert Peary arrived safely at Fort Conger only to have several toes snap off.

For those individuals who do not have the time nor the appropriate Patagonia wardrobe and heated socks to make the voyage, you can soon explore Fort Conger virtually on the CyArk website.

This project is made possible through an exciting new data donation partnership with SarPoint Engineering Ltd., Parks Canada, and the University Calgary. A 3D data set of Fort Conger now resides safely in the CyArk archive, and will soon be published for free access on cyark.org. The project will also feature beautiful 3D models that were created by Professor Peter Dawson and Dr. Richard Levy of University of Calgary.

Parks Canada is excited to make the outpost of Arctic exploration virtually available to the world. Chris Tucker of SarPoint said of the partnership “Donating the data to CyArk is a great opportunity to ensure the safety and longevity of the data, while also bringing global attention to Fort Conger and SarPoint.”

Once launched, we hope you will all check virtual Fort Conger. Eh!
SarPoint scanners at work capturing Fort Conger
Scan data of Fort Conger, now part of the CyArk archive
The team worked through frigid temperatures to record the historic structure