Pat's Knob Lookout reopened for fire season

Forest Service crew members Wesley Buchanan, AJ Jermyn and Tanner Ovitt made the long drive to the top of Pat’s Knob to open the historic Patrick’s Knob Lookout for the 2023 fire season.

Crew members spent the morning removing protective panels around the tower preparing it for this year’s fire detection staff member, Ken Richardson.

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 white man to settle in the Plains area in 1869. John also ran a ferry boat crossing the Clark Fork River at Plains. Now known as Pat’s Knob.

Opening day for Richardson included cleaning up a winter’s worth of dirt, bugs and installing the necessary equipment for his day-to-day fire detection.

That equipment included the most important instrument he will need to locate forest fire within the vast area of responsibility. That tool is called the Osborne Firefinder and 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.

Radio equipment was reinstalled, and supplies were restocked for his first shift. Those shifts starting July 11 are five days on and two days off, unless current fire conditions warrant closer monitoring.

Sitting in the tower, Richardson can view mountain tops stretching 25 to 35 miles in all directions.

He jokingly said, “It’s tough waking up to the view each day.”

He spends his days scanning the surrounding area with binoculars for smoke columns and answering the occasional questions from visitors that brave the long dusty climb up to the top of the 6,837-foot mountain. Richardson’s connection to the world includes his daily weather reports and fire conditions in his area.