So, a team of U.S. Forest Service workers and volunteers were careful Tuesday when they used ropes and pulleys to gingerly raise 19 refurbished windows to the top of the abandoned Mineral Peak lookout tower in the remote mountains northeast of Missoula.
The safety-tempered windows, which are part of a multiyear renovation of the historic tower, swayed in the wind sweeping over the 7,326-foot rocky pinnacle, but they all arrived unscratched.
“It’s going to be beautiful again,” said Libby Langston, a fire education specialist for the Lolo National Forest.
Fire lookout structures were once as much a part of the Western landscape as the forests they watched over.
Prompted by the massive wildland fires of 1910 in Montana and Idaho, the Forest Service built more than 5,000 lookout structures nationwide over the next five decades as part of its fire policy of early detection and total suppression. Most were built in the Northwest and Northern Rockies.
By the 1950s, lookout towers were being rendered largely obsolete and the Forest Service in 1965 started to demolish or burn abandoned lookout structures because of liability concerns.
The Mineral Peak tower was built in 1957 in the Gold Creek drainage in the Lolo National Forest just outside the Rattlesnake Wilderness.
One of the few tall fire lookout towers remaining in Montana, the 53-foot wooden tower was last used in the early 1970s and was slated for demolition.
Vandals had painted graffiti in the tower’s cab, shot a few bullet holes through the windows and destroyed the outhouse. Thieves also had stolen the copper cables that made up the tower’s lightning protection system.
But Langston and other fire lookout enthusiasts pushed to save the Mineral Peak tower, arguing that it had historic value and should be included the Forest Service’s public rental program.
The restoration project includes repairing the lightning ground system, wood shingle roof, guy wires, stairs, railings and catwalk, applying wood preservative and other tasks that are intended preserve the tower’s historic integrity, said Cathy Bickenheuser, historic preservation specialist for the Forest Service’s northern region.
The project, which should be complete by 2011, will cost an estimated $20,000, which includes public and private funds and donated labor and material.
The Forest Service tentatively plans to add the tower to its public rental program, which includes historic homesteads and other restored buildings.
The restoration is being conducted by the Forest Service’s Passport in Time program, which uses volunteers on archaeological and historic preservation projects nationwide. The work is being done in partnership with the Forest Fire Lookout Association.
“I like to see certain things preserved,” said volunteer Russ Royter of Missoula, who helped refurbish the tower’s windows. “There’s a lot of history in this country that I don’t want to see go up in smoke.”
For more information, read Wednesday's Missoulian or go to Missoulian.com.
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