Keeping watch

Fire lookouts occupy an uncommon spot in the world.

Their function is simultaneously anachronistic and essential. They exist in wildly remote spaces yet are satellites of human infrastructure.

Most people have never been to one, but they may still find something captivating and romantic about them. That same curiosity applies to firewatchers, the people who spend their summers, largely alone, perched in towers looking for smoke and “Keeping Watch.”

That’s the name of a map-based website created by University of Idaho graduate students Michael Decker, Chris Lamb and Jack Kredell that explores the history of fire lookouts in the Gem State and their place in the modern firefighting system and human culture.

“They are this very antiquated thing, you know?” Decker said. “They’ve been largely phased out by the agencies that built them, and yet they just endure. For some reason, they just don’t go away.”

He and his colleagues trekked to many of the still-functioning lookouts in Idaho and interviewed the people who work in them. They also talked to lookout historians and visited some of the abandoned lookout towers that are slowly melting into the landscape. All of it is assembled on the Keeping Watch website at bit.ly/3VYArCq.

“It’s an interactive map that people can go click into,” Decker said. “We have a series of blue circles across the state of Idaho map that represent what’s called the scene area — which is the 20- or 25-mile radius around the fire lookout that the fire watchers are responsible for watching over.”

Click on one of them and the viewer is presented with stats and information about the lookout and can listen to interviews of the people who staff them. For example, select Diablo Mountain in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and you will learn it was built in 1926 and has the R-6 cabin style of architecture. There are links to other sites with information about it, such as the National Lookout Historic Register, and there are interviews with Bill Moore, one of the firewatchers who works there. Bill Moore is the son of Bud Moore, an early Forest Service employee and author of “The Lochsa Story.”

Lookout towers became an integral part of the nation’s firefighting apparatus following the devastating Great Burn of 1910 that torched 3 million acres across northern and central Idaho and western Montana. Constructed on high ridges and mountaintops with sweeping views, they were and still are staffed by people whose primary job is to look for smoke that indicates a new fire start and call it into a dispatch center.

Then versus now

Technology is changing both the need for fire lookouts and the nature of the work for those who still staff them. Today, modern technology that began with surveillance by fixed-wing aircraft and evolved to include drones, satellite imagery and sophisticated heat mapping has disrupted the lookout system. Many towers have been removed or have been converted to rental cabins. Others still exist but sit empty.

Though the footprint of the fire lookout system has atrophied, Decker said they remain an important part of the modern firefighting apparatus. He said not only do the people who staff them continue to serve as remote fire detection eyes, they also perform a critical communication and safety role in the backcountry that requires a human touch.

“I don’t have the feeling that they’re gonna go away,” Decker said. “I have a sense that anybody who’s out in the field knows that having a person up in the tower is good.”

Firefighters depend on radio communication when dispatched to remote places like central Idaho. But the jagged, twisted and often vertical geography there creates radio dead zones. In such cases, lookouts can serve like old-school telephone operators. A fire crew in a deep canyon might not be able to hale their dispatch center but still be in reach of a nearby lookout tower.

At the same time, people in the lookout towers can provide on-the-ground firefighters, who are often not from the area, with critical knowledge of the local terrain. Decker and his colleagues asked firewatches for their thoughts about modern technology and whether it is a threat to lookouts.

“People always said that they didn’t dislike the technology that was encroaching on fire lookouts. They just thought that all of those things should be present. You should have aerial surveillance. You should have these sort of sophisticated GIS technologies — you know, satellite imagery or geothermal heat mapping. You should have all these things, but you should also have a person in the mix.”

Decker noted the work life of firewatchers has changed. They were once connected to the outside world only by radio or precariously strung telephone wire that was prone to outages caused by falling trees. At that, the radios and phones were connected only to fire dispatch centers.

Today, fire lookouts can sometimes use their cellphones or other electronics powered by solar panels and satellite links to connect not only with their bosses but the wider world beyond.

“We met people who had remote teaching jobs that they were doing from lookouts,” he said. “I was able to Facebook message some of them to set up plans for me to hike out to their lookout tower.”

The future

Decker hopes the site sparks curiosity and discussions about fire lookouts and notes the menu of topics is broad. You can talk about architecture, the philosophy of wilderness, literature — writers like Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac and Philip Whalen all worked in lookouts — firefighting history and, he hopes, the future of these iconic structures.

“If someone just comes to the site, and it helps sort of spark an idea or a thought about fire lookouts they hadn’t had before, or reframe their mindset around what the fire lookout is … I think the site has succeeded,” he said.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com.