fire lookouts | North Fork Preservation Association

It seems the Coal Ridge “patrol cabin” was actually the original lookout up there. Anyways, it got new siding last week to go with the roof that was installed a couple of years ago . . .

An historic lookout up the North Fork on Coal Ridge received some badly needed care last week as Forest Service crews installed new siding on the weather-beaten building.

The Coal Ridge Lookout, which has sat atop the Whitefish Range since 1928, doesn’t resemble a lookout — the current map actually calls it a cabin. It has small windows, and the Osborne Fire Finder used to pinpoint fire starts was mounted on a metal pole outside of the building.

But it was a definitely a fire lookout, Flathead National Forest lookout Leif Haugen said.

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For more information on this project, go to http://www.nwmt-ffla.org/#!2014-projects/c1nlq and scroll down to the “Moran Patrol Cabin” section.

The Flathead Beacon posted an interesting article on fire lookouts . . .

Hiking to the remote mountaintops of the Flathead Valley can be a humbling admonisher of nature’s forces, but some of Montana’s peaks and ridges also bristle with a reminder of mankind’s attempt to subdue that vigor.

Like cabins in the sky, fire lookouts — a term used to describe both a person and a place — rose to prominence a century ago, when wildfire detection became a priority following the massive fires of 1910, and the U.S. Forest Service launched its fire lookout program in earnest.

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed more than 5,000 towers across the country, often in remote and inaccessible locations, and today, although modern technology and airplane surveillance play larger roles in spotting flames, the lookout program remains intact.

Read more . . .