Female Fire Lookouts Have Been Saving the Wilderness for Over a Century

May 2, 2023 9:21 PM

Female Fire Lookouts Have Been Saving the Wilderness for Over a Century. Spotting smoke from towers on high peaks could have been deemed "man's work", but a few pioneers paved the way for generations of women to do the job.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (5 comments total)

There's a fire tower near where I live that's fallen into a sad state of disrepair since satellite hotspot detection became a thing.

It's a shame. I went up there a couple of times before the timbers had rotted to the point where it became too obviously unsafe to do that, and I can think of fewer more pleasant ways to make a modest living than sitting way above the bush, in the shade, by myself, with nothing to do but read and scan for smoke plumes between turning the pages.
posted by flabdablet at 10:06 PM on May 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

There's one visible from the Bruce Highway on the Sunshine Coast that doesn't seem to have been in use for many years. Every year or so when I drive past, I notice it looks a little more dilapidated. Even though it was keeping watch over commercial pine forests rather than pristine old-growth eucalypts, it always made me feel like someone was watching over us from way up there.

I had no idea that women did and continue to make up so many of the numbers. That's fantastic and somewhat surprising, given forestry work has always been something of a boys' club.
posted by dg at 11:40 PM on May 2, 2023

Like lighthouse keeping a once vital job eliminated by technology with no modern equivalent.
posted by Mitheral at 5:23 AM on May 3, 2023

I did this one summer in college in Montana. Lonely but cool.
posted by Ideefixe at 2:42 PM on May 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yes, I think the similarity is why I'm always on the lookout for fire towers - my family history is filled with lighthouse-keeping stories.
posted by dg at 2:45 PM on May 3, 2023