Sweeping views of the Mission and Swan mountain ranges at an elevation of nearly 7,500 feet aided the U.S. Forest Service in early fire detection. From 1957 through 1967, Mineral Peak was a primary lookout point. Lolo National Forest Service staff built the current station to replace a previous lookout. The Wood Fabricating Company in Portland shipped the lookout house kit to Montana. Since the site was accessible only by pack trail, a Forest Service crew bulldozed and bladed a thirteen-mile road from Gold Creek to the top of Mineral Peak. They then drove the bundled materials to the site for assembly. The 1936-pattern L-4 Lookout House sits atop a 53-foot straight timber tower. The house portion is of simple V-Rustic wood siding capped with a pyramidal roof of green-stained sawn cedar shingles. Ribbons of windows on all four sides afforded views of the surrounding forest. Most of the original top-hinged shutters, all but one now in the closed position, remain. Four flights of open stairs lead to the catwalk that spans the perimeter of the lookout. The site served until 1968 when an inspection determined that Mineral Peak had reported few first discovery fires. The 15,400 acres of surrounding forest contained no high values of timber and the access road was poor. Given these deficiencies, the Forest Service downgraded the site to an emergency lookout. By 1974 it was manned only during extreme fire danger and began to deteriorate. Vacant from 1980 to 2005, the Missoula Ranger District refurbished the lookout to shelter occasional backpackers and hikers.
]]>Unlike most fire lookout houses, which are typically placed on towers, the West Fork Butte Lookout sits directly on a rocky knob. The fourteen-by-fourteen hipped-roof structure features ribbons of nine-light windows, a testament to the building’s original purpose. The lookout follows the Forest Service’s standard L-4 plan, created by Clyde Fickes in 1931. Fickes’ detailed plans specified pre-cut and labeled lumber, so crews with limited carpentry skills could assemble them. One of seventeen lookouts built in 1934, West Fork Butte Lookout reflects the Forest Service’s emphasis during the 1930s on improving infrastructure to facilitate fire-fighting. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews—employed as part of a New Deal work relief program designed to provide jobs for young men during the Great Depression—deserve credit for most of these improvements. In Region 1, which includes Montana, the CCC built over 2,500 miles of forest roads, installed ninety-three lookouts, and strung the hundreds of miles of telephone lines that lookouts used to report fires. Two telephone poles from the spur line that connected West Fork Butte to the Skookum Butte Lookout still stand. Although the Forest Service preferred to employ men, women sometimes did staff lookouts, especially during World War II, when male labor was scarce; Missoula resident Dortha Stritch, wife of Forest Service employee Hollis Stritch, worked here in 1943. The Forest Service downgraded West Fork Butte to an “emergency lookout” before 1967. It now manages the property as a cabin rental, although the Missoula Ranger reserves the right to reclaim it as a detection point in severe fire years.
]]>Pack mules provided the only access to this site in 1932, when U.S. Forest Service personnel constructed the Double Arrow Lookout. Built following the L-4 plan designed by Clyde Fickes, the structure overlooks the Clearwater River drainage from atop a twenty-foot tower. Fickes’ detailed plans specified pre-cut and labeled lumber, so employees with limited carpentry skills could assemble the structures. Notable design elements include a three-foot catwalk, ribbons of nine-light windows (providing a 360-degree view), and a pyramidal hipped roof. Hipped roofs used shorter lengths of lumber than gable roofs, making it easier to transport material to the site by pack train. The fourteen-by-fourteen-foot structure doubled as living quarters for the lookout man stationed here during fire season. This is one of the first L-4 style lookouts built after Region 1, which included all of the forests in Montana and Northern Idaho, approved Fickes’ design in 1931. After World War II, Region 1 increasingly abandoned “fixed detection points” (lookouts) for “aerial detection” (airplanes and helicopters), and the number of lookouts dropped from 844 in 1945 to 272 in 1954. The Forest Service continued to staff lookouts with views of high value lands that suffered frequent fires; the Double Arrow Lookout remained in use at least until 1967 and likely into the 1980s. Once it was no longer needed as part of the Lolo National Forest’s ground detection network, the structure was abandoned and began to deteriorate. Crews restored the lookout in 2006 to become part of the Forest Service’s cabin rental program.
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