Rick McClure, Forest Archaeologist
By the time we had opened up our fourth excavation unit, we had a pretty good idea of what to expect, and this expectation was written all over the faces of dig partners Carol and Margaret. Clearing leaves, twigs, and fir needles from their square meter of ground, they began to cautiously scrape so very gently with freshly sharpened trowels. It was but a matter of minutes before pieces of glass, fragments of metal, a button, and the buckle from a set of suspenders emerged from just below the surface. Next door, in Unit 114, Chelsea was working around the edges of a caulked boot sole buried just below the surface. Hunkered over their screens nearby, Larry and Dave listened to Gordon tell tales of PIT adventures at Lake Tahoe.
I was studying a photograph showing this very spot as it appeared in 1911, with a two-story hand-hewn log bunk-house perched on the edge of the slope dropping to the creek. Other buildings were scattered along the bank upstream. This was Camp 3 of the Wind River Lumber Company, constructed a century ago as the headquarters for a logging operation that used steam “donkey” engines and splash dams to move logs from the forest. The site of Camp 3 was now thick with spring vegetation and looked nothing like the scene in the old photograph.
Studying the picture, FS archaeologist Cheryl Mack pointed into the brush. “It looks like people were throwing things out the back door and over the bank there.” As we pondered the position of the building, Brian emerged from the brush below us with a metal detector in one hand and a fistful of pin flags in the other, announcing the discovery of a brass lantern. This was the day we realized we had located the site of the company bunkhouse, used from 1902 to 1912. Most of the artifacts we were finding were, in fact, the personal effects of the men who lived there while logging one of the earliest national forest timber sales in the region. It was also the first day of the 2002 project. Now, three years later, and thanks to more PIT volunteers who helped analyze the materials recovered, we have a pretty picture of life at Camp 3.
A week of excavation by nine PIT volunteers left us with a large sample of artifacts that would become the focus of a second phase of work in the fall of 2002. Lumberjack Lab became the logical outgrowth of the field project. Five PIT volunteers each spent five days at various work stations in the historic Heritage Program laboratory at Trout Lake, Washington. Buttons, buckles, clasps, tobacco tins, and other artifacts came out of their field bags for cleaning and cataloging. While some volunteers measured objects and typed information into the computer database, others searched the Internet or looked through period mail-order catalogs for additional clues to artifact age and function.
By the time we adjourned the Lumberjack Lab project, everything was labeled and stored in acid-free archival packaging. Our artifact catalog was complete and more-detailed analysis could begin.
Since initially planning the Camp 3 excavation project, we made several important discoveries that will help in interpreting the archaeology of the century-old lumber camp. Four private collections of photographs came to light, providing us with a variety of images of Camp 3 and its occupants in the period from 1904 to 1912. One local resident provided close-up photographs of the logger’s bunkhouse; another had a period photo album kept by the wife of one of the men. We also obtained federal census data for 1910 that had a complete list of Camp 3 residents. We now know the names of each of the men who lived in the bunkhouse and whose artifacts we had uncovered. Combining the historical data and results of artifact analysis, we can now piece together a more complete picture of the lives these men led.
We know that there were 32 men and 2 women in the camp, and the average age of the crew was 29. The camp was a virtual melting pot of transient labor: 38 percent were immigrants, and 62 percent had been born in the United States. Foreign-born residents came from eight different European countries; the rest from nine U.S. states. Only one man came from a local family. In 1910, Daniel Allen was the rigging rustler on the crew, and Hans Howe the hook tender. When we look at the two broken iron “dogs”—large hooks pounded into logs for hauling—found at the site by PIT volunteers, we know that Hans and Daniel were probably the last men to actually handle the artifacts.
Studying the newly acquired photographs, we can look into the eyes of the same men who cast medicine bottles, tobacco tins, and ruined clothing over the bank in front of their bunkhouse. We imagine these same men sitting around a big wood stove in the evening, the aroma of pipe smoke mingling with the smell of wet wool, kerosene from the lamps, sweat, and the stink of the socks drying on the line near the fire. Archaeology, is, after all, about people and cultures, and so we imagine the sounds of these men, the Norwegian, German, and Russian accents in their English, the twang of the Texan on the crew, and wonder about the commonality they created for themselves in their work and life together. Little by little, the analysis of artifacts, photographs, and documents is beginning to give us a sense of their world.
Green Mountain Fire Lookout Restoration
Mt. Baker–Snoqualmie NF, 2002–2003
The Almost True History of the Lookcopter
by Gordon Pfister, PIT Volunteer
In the north part of the state of Washington, the Mt. Baker–Snoqualmie NF had a problem. The old fire lookout on top of Green Mountain was in bad shape. Years of heavy northwest snows, shrieking winter gales, pouring rains, and rodent activity had left it wounded, soiled, and generally coming apart. This was a lookout that had performed its traditional backcountry tasks faithfully and well since the 1930s. It had to be saved.
A series of PIT projects was planned to restore the tower, beginning in the summer of 2000. For three consecutive summers, PIT volunteers helped with various aspects of the restoration: removing, reglazing, and replacing windows; trimming and painting; and restoring the interior details. At one point, our efforts resulted in western Washington temporarily running out of glazing compound. There are a lot of windows in a lookout! Most of the work was done at the FS compound in Darrington. The plan was to return with rejuvenated and repaired items to the mountaintop, where they would be combined (through the magic of yet another PIT project) with new lumber into a restored, historically accurate structure.
Several factors began to revise these plans however. One was the very large number of vertical feet separating the lookout roof from the rocks far, far below. The second was the very cramped, lumpy, and almost waterless camping place located well below the lookout’s constricted, lofty site. While the famous summer rains of the Pacific Northwest temporarily relieved the parched condition of the camp, it made working on the tower an even more precarious undertaking. Then there were the mosquitoes, at first mistaken by visiting PIT volunteers to be hummingbirds. The final straw was the heavy snow load in the winter of 2002–2003, which necessitated moving the entire structure to Darrington Ranger Station to finish the restoration. The station had a tool shop of woodworking power equipment. It had rain-proof volunteer housing. It had many level, flat, safe places where the lookout could be built in modules by workers standing on solid ground. These modules could then be flown into the site and much more quickly and safely assembled. That was the plan for the 2003 summer PIT effort.
Once the project began, however, several factors combined to further revise our plans. While modules were indeed quicker, easier, and, thus, safer to handle, some basic problems remained. Securing clear, straight-grained fir (as used in the original lookout) was difficult and downright cost-prohibitive when some could be found. The cost of flying in the completed modules was daunting. Even with all the work and new materials, the same factors that caused this poor lookout’s demise (wind, ice, snow, visiting adolescents, etc.) would bring the new structure to its knees all too soon. Too bad there wasn’t a way to take it out of that high and punishing environment for the winters. Prompted by one volunteer’s vision of an airplane propeller as he held a new 6-by-10 fir board in his hand, this talented and imaginative PIT crew (as all PIT crews are!) began coming up with a theory.
The group determined that what was really needed was not modules that were flyable, but an entire, finished structure that could fly! We needed a LOOKout + a modern heliCOPTER; what we needed was a LOOKCOPTER. It would not need to go long distances or fly above the oxygen. A Mark III fire pump would probably provide all the power that was needed. The Lookcopter would not need much instrumentation. Do you really need a gas gauge when you only have a two-quart fuel supply maximum? The advantages of such a moveable lookout were staggering. If the visibility is poor, go somewhere else! If a hot summer afternoon brings too many visitors all asking dumb questions, leave! In fire season, spot the blaze, fly over it, dump a bucket of water and collect hazard pay plus overtime, contribute to the suppression effort, and still sleep in your own bed! In the fall, do flyovers at local high school football games. Land at halftime and display this marvel of FS history and modern technology. Solve access issues year-round by going to those that cannot come to the high and largely inaccessible perch points of the old lookout. The landing of a historic lookout in front of the local retirement center is bound to attract public notice and wide media attention. With a Lookcopter, a forest can put it in fire service all summer long, rent it out as a recreation cabin rental in the spring and fall, bring it back to snug quarters for maintenance and storage for the winter, and still have a year-round historical structure for the education and admiration of all.
“Are historical accuracy and flight compatible?” someone asked. Of course it would have to be a historically correct lookout as it sits, but who cares how it gets there? Do visitors to lookouts demand to see the mules that brought in the lumber or to meet the old guys who built the place? Of course not! “How are the rotors and tail assembly authentic?” someone else asked. They aren’t, so take them off. The top rotor pulls out easily and can be hidden away in the brush. The top hole is covered with a flattened gas can. Many are the backcountry cabin roof holes that have been so covered in the past. Pull the nails out of the tail assembly and hide it too. A big bunch of old nail holes is part of any historical mountain structure. The crew was ready and pawing at the ground. Materials were available, and a new marriage of antiquity and modern science was possible, practical, and profitable. And so, the plan was changed once again. The rest of this tome is strictly fictional.
Early use of the prototype lookcopter revealed some small flaws and valuable lessons. It was quickly learned that significant lift could be obtained by bringing the side shutters out to a full “flaps up” position. It was also found that the poles and hardware to hold the shutters up had to be much more robust than in the past. It was determined that liftoff from the lookout site could be made much easier if the lightning rod wire was unbolted from the deeply buried ground connection. (Otherwise flight was limited to an 80-foot circle around the departure point.) It was found that FS employees could quickly learn to fly about as well as they could drive. Several employees arrived at strange locations after taking a compass bearing from the corner by the stove. Many also found it difficult to remember to check the gearbox for pack rat nests before takeoff and to drain the Lookcopter oil on schedule. Fairly constant reminders had to be made that duct tape was not an acceptable substitute for proper maintenance and repair.
Several backpacker types were initially puzzled to find what appeared to be the same structure on three different peaks over one season. Several others, who identified themselves as “detail oriented,” openly questioned the historical authenticity of the structure. This was not based on the construction (which was flawless) but on the total absence of any “mouse prints.” Anyone familiar with backcountry structures of any kind will readily agree that such an absence is in stark contradiction to pellet reality. It may be that to provide for a completely accurate historical experience, totally hygienic, plastic MREs (Manufactured Rodent Excreta) will have to be scattered about before such sharp-eyed visitors arrive. An unexpected complication came from the use by one young, lonely lookout’s use of the Lookcopter to go out for pizza. The administration’s position was somewhat hostile until it was determined that the employee had never left her assigned workstation during the entire episode.
From the “Land of Many Uses” has come a structure/ craft of many uses. Thanks to a small group of skilled and farsighted PIT planners and participants, an entirely new era of lookout use has begun. The impact of the Lookcopter is just beginning.