Interviewer
Beth Hodder, Kjell Petersen
Files
Description
Bill Fordyce discusses being born in St. Louis and moving as a child to Sheridan, Wyoming where he lived on a dude ranch. He describes his family later moving back to St. Louis, but Bill couldn’t take city life and left after high school for the West. He said a friend in Helena, Montana suggesting he apply for a lookout job and was hired in 2009 for his first lookout job at Bearhat Lookout for the Lewis and Clark National Forest. He discusses being sent to work with no training, his first fire was one tree, and his season ending with the death of his mother. In 2010, back at Bearhat, Bill remembers reporting a mule breaking a woman’s knees. With a storm coming, a helicopter barely got her out. Bill’s most traumatic season was 2011 because he experienced responding to a death. The interview was stopped at this point because of technical difficulties. It was continued as OH 000-020 on December 9, 2021.
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Document Type
Oral History
Subjects
Bill Fordyce; Patrol Lookout; Prairie Reef Lookout; Beartop Lookout; Scalplock Lookout; Numa Lookout; Cyclone Lookout; Middle Fork Peak Lookout; Corral Hill Lookout; Polebridge, Montana; Bob Marshall Wilderness
Original Date
12-7-2021
Time Period
Twentieth century
Geographic Coverage
Montana
Language
eng
Original Collection
Northwest Montana Lookout Association Oral History Project, OH 453, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula
Digital Publisher
University of Montana--Missoula. Mansfield Library
Rights
Copyright to this collection is held by the interview participants and by the Northwest Montana Lookout Association. Permission may be required for use. For further information please contact Archives and Special Collections: (406) 243-2053 / library.archives@umontana.edu
Oral History Number
OH 453-019
Media Type
Moving Image; Sound; Text
Digital Format
video/mp4; application/pdf; text/plain
Run Time
00:29:59 minutes
Local Filename
OH_453_019.mp3; OH_453_019.pdf; OH_453_019.srt
Citation
Fordyce, William C., "Bill Fordyce Interview, December 7, 2021" (2021). Northwest Montana Lookout Association Oral History Project. 19.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/nwmt-ffla/19