THE EYES OF THE FOREST 



By Wallace Hutchinson 



T?VER since the time when the descendants of Noah 

 '--' undertook to build a tower reaching unto heaven on 

 the plains of Shinar, the people of this world have in- 

 stinctively sought high elevations from which to look 

 out over the earth. Thus in the olden days kings viewed 

 great battles from the crests of hills, and watchmen 

 were set in high towers to guard cities from the menace 

 of flood or fire. Even in our own time the lure of height, 

 as exemplified by the Eiffel tower, Woolworth building, 

 Washington monument, and numberless high mountain 

 peaks, annually attracts thousands of visitors. 



It is but natural, therefore, that the United States For- 

 est Service, charged with the administration and protec- 

 tion of more 

 than 156 mil- 

 lion acres of 

 National For- 

 e s t s, located 

 for the most 

 ]) a r t in the 

 rough and in- 

 accessible 

 mountain re- 

 gions of the 

 West, should 

 early develop a 

 system of for- 

 est fire detec- 

 t i n based 

 upon lookouts 

 placed on high 

 e 1 e V a t i o ns. 

 More than 500 

 such eyes c)f 

 the forest now 

 dot these great 

 Federal reser- 

 vations in the 

 White Moun- 

 tains of New 

 H a m p s hire ; 

 the Appala- 

 chians and Ozarks of the South ; the Lake States ; the 

 Rocky Mountains and the Cascade, Sierra Nevada and 

 Coast Ranges of the Pacific. 



The evolution of the fire lookout forms an interesting 



A PkiMlTIVE LOOKOUT 



This is the most primitive style of fire lookout a rocky point on the Olympic National For- 

 est in Washington, from which large areas of forest are visible. 



ment of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture, 

 and the creation of the Forest Service, a new era was in- 

 augurated. Since that time, fire control has been given 

 precedence over all other work by Uncle Sam's foresters, 

 and an efficient system of detection and suppression de- 

 veloped which has materially reduced the annual fire loss 

 in all Government forests. In 1920, for example, out of a 

 total of 6,078 fires on the National Forests, 80 per cent 

 were discovered and extinguished before they had cov- 

 ered 10 acres each. Fire lookout stations played a large 

 part in these results. 



In its early efforts to check the ravages of fire, the 

 Forest Service established an extensive system of 



ground - patrol 

 of the forests. 

 Definite routes 

 of travel were 

 laid out and 

 men called 

 "smoke - chas- 

 ers" employed 

 to patrol these 

 beats. In the 

 course of their 

 duties, these 

 m e n found 

 that by visiting 

 prominent ele- 

 vations it was 

 possible to 

 view large 

 areas of forest, 

 which would 

 otherwise be 

 unprotect- 

 ed, and detect 

 smokes which 

 could not, ordi- 

 n a r i 1 y, be 

 "s p o t t e d" 

 from the trails 

 running 

 through the dense timber. This led in time to the build- 

 ing of rough ladders to the tops of high trees, the con- 

 struction of rude log towers, and the selection of isolated 

 peaks as observation posts. Thus the idea of lookouts 



chapter in the history of the development of our Na- -, for fire detection gradually developed. 



tional Forests. When a number of these i)ublic areas, 

 containing vast timber, water, and forage resources, 

 were first set aside two decades or more ago for the per- 

 petual use of the American people, little thought was 

 given to their protection. This was due largely to the 

 lack of adequate funds and trained personnel to combat 

 fires. Rut in 1905, following the transfer of the Na- 

 tional Forests by President Roosevelt from the Depart- 



It is not such a far cry from the days when smoke- 

 chasers climbed to the top of some hill to sweep the 

 mountains with their glasses, to the highly developed 

 lookout stations of the present day. A period of less 

 than 10 years covers the marked progress that has been 

 made in this method of fire detection. During this time 

 it was found that the highest mountains did not always 

 make the best lookouts ; that observatories must be pro- 



