Watch a video of restoration work on the Mineral Peak lookout tower 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.
Many of the lookout structures were built in the 1930s by Civilian Conservation Corps workers, who hauled wood, steel and tools to remote mountaintops with panoramic views.
The structures were staffed by seasonal workers who used sharp eyes, binoculars, radios and an instrument known as an Osborne firefinder, which consisted of a circular map of the surrounding landscape with a brass alidade mounted on it that could pinpoint a fire's location. The lookouts often descended their perches, picked up a Pulaski and tried to keep the blazes from spreading.
By the 1950s, lookout towers were being rendered largely obsolete by airplane fire spotters, which had complemented lookout towers since 1915, by smokejumpers and by a growing network of logging roads that allowed for early detection and suppression of fires.
In 1965, the Forest Service started to demolish or burn abandoned lookout structures because of liability concerns. About one lookout is lost each week due to lack of maintenance, demolition, wildfire and other causes in the United States, according to the nonprofit Forest Fire Lookout Association.
But in recent years, a growing number of lookout structures have been restored for firefighting use, public rentals or historic purposes. Hundreds of lookout structures are still in active service nationwide, including five in the Lolo National Forest.
The Mineral Peak tower was built in 1957 in the Gold Creek drainage in the Lolo National Forest just outside the Rattlesnake Wilderness.
The site had two earlier fire lookouts, but Forest Service records are unclear about what type they were. At least one was a structure of some sort as evidenced by the remains of concrete footers.
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.
In 2006, Forest Service staffers inspected the tower, which they expected to find in poor condition from a lack of maintenance.
But they found the tower was still structurally sound, in part, because its guy wires had been loosened when it was abandoned, which prevented it from being torn apart during the stresses of winter storms.
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.
Budget restrictions limit the tower's restoration work to one week a year, but that's all right for Bickenheuser, Langston and their various teams of workers, who have devoted 500 volunteer hours so far.
“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.”
The restoration team dug through a snowbank covering the rocky road to reach the tower, where they're spending this week sleeping under the stars, eating barbecued chicken and other hearty fare and putting a piece of American history back together.
From the top of the tower, which sways slightly in afternoon wind gusts, the view takes in the Mission, Swan and other mountain ranges stretching as far as the eye can see, where the earth is a mosaic of green forest, rust-colored rocks, vibrant wildflowers and snowy peaks.
Langston, who has written a book about fire lookout recipes, poems, facts and reminiscences, became a lookout enthusiast after visiting a friend who spent a summer atop a tower in Idaho more than 20 years ago.
“Historically, these lookouts play such a central role” in America's understanding of wildfires, which today are managed as a natural part of the West's ecosystem. “I think they're remarkable.”
More information is available at www.firelookout.org.
Reporter John Cramer can be reached at 523-5259 or at johncramer@missoulian.com.
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