Patrick's Knob fire tower a relic of the pioneer days
A firefinder, invented by William Osborne Jr. in 1911, is shown inside the Patrick's Knob fire lookout on the Lolo National Forest. (Tracy Scott/Valley Press)
Jack and Judy Foster take a tour of the Patrick's Knob fire lookout on the Lolo National Forest. (Tracy Scott/Valley Press)
A smoke plume from the Elmo 2 Fire west of Flathead Lake is seen from the Patrick's Knob fire lookout on the Lolo National Forest. (Tracy Scott/Valley Press)
The Patrick's Knob fire lookout on the Lolo National Forest. (Tracy Scott/Valley Press)
Ken Richardson’s day starts at sunrise in the Patrick’s Knob fire lookout and ends at sunset.
Always scanning the mountaintops and river valleys for any signs of smoke, he spends his third season at the tower sending out weather reports and answering questions from visitors that brave the bumpy, rocky and very dusty climb up to the 6,837-foot mountaintop.
Most days Richardson will see only a few visitors, with no one day being busier than others. He also said that most visitors didn’t venture up to the fire lookout, where they can view the interior of the tower. Visitors are not allowed inside but can walk around the exterior on the balcony.
Registered as a National Historic Lookout in 2009, the current tower replaced a 20-foot pole tower built in 1934. Patrick’s Tower was named after John W. Patrick, who was the third caucasian to settle in the Plains are in 1869. Patrick also ran a ferry boat crossing the Clark Fork River at Plains. Now known as Pat’s Knob, Patrick's early pioneer activities live on.
Devastating blazes of 1910, which consumed 4,700 square miles of forest lands in Washington, Idaho and Montana and killed 85 people, made early detection of wildfires a priority within the newly formed Forest Service. The 1910 disaster inspired plans to organize a fire lookout network. During the 1930s more than 5,000 fire lookout towers were built.
Early fire lookout personnel, commonly known as smoke chasers, were also called upon to physically fight local fires with what tools they could easily carry, such as shovels, pulaskis and axes. An early tool still in use today at most manned fire lookouts is the Osborne Firefinder. This tool was invented by William Bushnell Osborne Jr. in 1911. It allowed lookouts to pinpoint the location of forest fires by sighting distant smoke, measuring the distance from the lookout and the compass bearing.
The use of fire lookouts reached their peak in 1938 and gradually declined through the 1950s, with only a few hundred still being in service. Most fire lookouts have been replaced with infrared detection devices and the use of aircraft.
Many of the still standing lookouts are maintained as scenic vista points and as historic relics from the frontier days of the early Forest Service.
