This collection contains interviews detailing the work of forest fire lookouts in Montana and the Northwest. The interviews were conducted from 2016 to present by Beth Hodder and other members of the Northwest Montana Lookout Association (NMLA). NMLA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of historic fire lookouts on Federal and State lands in Northwest Montana. The interviewees discuss their time working as summer forest fire lookouts, what the job entailed, and the fires they spotted. They also describe daily life including packing in food and water, encounters with wildlife, and the solitude. The original interviews are held as Oral History collection OH 453 at Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.
In 2021, the organization changed its name from Northwest Montana Chapter of the Forest Fire Lookout Association to the Northwest Montana Lookout Association. Visit the NMLA website to learn more about the organization.
This collection includes 33 interviews.
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Betty Violette Interview, February 14, 2024
Betty Ann Violette
Betty Violette shares stories of her eleven seasons as a fire lookout in Montana's Flathead National Forest (FNF) and Kootenai National Forest (KNF). Betty grew up in St. Ignatius, Montana, and struggled to find her career path. She discusses wanting to be an artist but ... Read More
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Bill Fordyce Interview, December 7, 2021
William C. Fordyce
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 ... Read More
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Bill Fordyce Interview, December 9, 2021
William C. Fordyce
Bill recalls helping fly a dead man out in a helicopter near Beartop Lookout, his lookout site. He discusses lightning hitting Beartop and thinking he was deaf and blind for a while. He watches a grizzly bear stalk and elk, and talks of eating food ... Read More
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Bob Folkestad and Marj Folkestad Interview, January 22, 2021
Bob Folkestad and Marj Folkestad
Bob Folkestad recalls how growing up in Montana, then visiting to hike, camp, and fish after his family moved, influenced his decision to work for the Forest Service after high school. He discusses applying for a fire lookout position in the summers while attending Seattle ... Read More
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Brian Miller Interview, July 11, 2022
Brian Miller
In Brian Miller’s second interview, he remembers being five years old with his father, Gene Miller, on Mormon Peak Lookout. He recalls his mother and sister visiting when his mother rushed Gene to the hospital for gall bladder surgery. Brian tells of being on Sliderock ... Read More
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Brian Miller Interview, June 20, 2022
Brian Miller
Brian shares being born in Indiana but his family moved to Montana when he was four. He tells of living in Potomac, where he also went to school. He says playing outdoors led to a “wild imagination. Brian talks of growing up with his father, ... Read More
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Cathy Schloeder Interview, August 1, 2018
Cathy Schloeder
Cathy Schloeder speaks of growing up in the Canal Zone in Panama, and moving back to the United States at the age of 13. She describes her college studies, in both California and Montana, and her move to Montana. She further accounts how she and ... Read More
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C. Kjell Petersen Interview, August 25, 2018
C. Kjell Petersen
Kjell Petersen talks about staffing the Snow Peak and Beaver Ridge lookouts as a U.S. Forest Service employee, starting in the late 1960s. He recalls how his lookout was struck by lightning three times in one afternoon, hauling water, calling in a full moon as ... Read More
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Dale Zorn Interview, September 16, 2016
Dale Zorn
Dale Zorn describes his childhood in Chester, Montana. He talks about working for the U.S. National Park Service as a fire lookout on Mount Brown soon after he married. Zorn recalls packing supplies up to the lookout, melting snow to get water, and the accommodations ... Read More
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Daniel Yuhas Interview, August 25, 2023
Daniel Yuhas
Daniel Yuhas talks of his parents being lookouts in 1947 on Desert Mountain when he was in diapers at eight months old. Dan recalls his father’s long Forest Service career with the Glacier View Ranger District, Flathead National Forest, including playing at the Big Creek ... Read More
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Dan Snell Interview, May 25, 2024
Robert Danny Snell
Dan Snell shares growing up in Morocco in North Africa before moving to North Carolina, joining the Marines at 17. He became a lookout at Patrol Mountain, Lewis and Clark National Forest, in 1972 and was a lookout for twenty-two years. Dan describes feeling lucky ... Read More
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Diane Boyd Interview, February 9, 2025
Diane Boyd
Diane Boyd, a lookout veteran from the early 1980s, discusses being born and raised in Minnesota. She shares that she moved to Montana in 1979 for a Master's study on the only wolf in the area at the time. She details her career in wolf ... Read More
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Gene Miller Interview, February 26, 2021
A. Eugene Miller
In this second interview, Gene Miller provides more information about growing up in the Swan Valley in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He describes the wildlife that lived in the area including bears and a young coyote who found Gene companionable. Miller tells more ... Read More
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Gene Miller Interview, February 4, 2021
A. Eugene Miller
Gene Miller describes growing up in Montana’s Swan Valley and how that helped him decide to become a U.S. Forest Service lookout. Miller talks about his 38-year tenure as a lookout, including on Priscilla Peak, three lookout towers as a relief staffer, and then 37 ... Read More
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Gene Miller Interview, March 4, 2021
A. Eugene Miller
Gene Miller’s third interview follows his many years of fire experiences, from harrowing lightening strikes around and beneath his lookout that sparked fires to winds rocking the lookout, to large hail storms. He watched first from several lookouts during several years with many large fires, ... Read More
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George Ostrom Interview, August 31, 2017
George Ostrom
George Ostrom discusses his childhood in Montana, including his time spent in a mining camp where his father worked. He describes his decision to become a fire lookout during the 1940s, working mainly at the Battery Lookout above Quintonkon Creek. Ostrom talks about the equipment ... Read More
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Greg Morley Interview, August 8, 2019
Greg Morley
Greg Morley describes his experiences working at Jumbo Lookout in the Flathead National Forest for a year during the 1960s. He talks about why he chose to become a lookout, then describes where the lookout was located, traveling to it by horseback, and what sorts ... Read More
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Ivan O'Neil Interview, June 16, 2017
Ivan O'Neil
Ivan O’Neil discusses his experiences as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout at the Pioneer Ridge Lookout in the Flathead National Forest in Montana. He recalls lying about his age to get a summer job on a brush crew at the Coram Ranger Station in ... Read More
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Jan Walters and Clare Walters Interview, September 23, 2021
Janet E. Walters and Clarence P. Walters
This interview covers lookout experiences for Clare Walters in 1963 and Clare and Jan Walters in 1967. Clare Walters describes his first lookout job on Johnson Lookout, Flathead National Forest, in 1963. From the Star Meadows Guard Station, Clare said he hiked into Johnson Lookout ... Read More
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Judi Wingard and Merv Wingard Interview, February 17, 2024
Judith Marie Wingard and Mervin Elliott Wingard
Merv and Judi Wingard share their experiences as lookouts at Numa Ridge and Apgar in Glacier National Park in 1968 and 1969. Judi reflects on her idyllic childhood in Washington, filled with nature and supportive neighbors. Merv shares his love for nature and mountain climbing, ... Read More
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Julia Osborn Interview, November 5, 2016
Julia Osborn
Julia Osborn talks about her father, Joe Osborn who was a former smokejumper, forest fire lookout, and university professor. Osborn discusses her father’s childhood in Muncie, Indiana, and his time attending Purdue University. Osborn describes how her father, a Quaker and a conscientious objector, joined ... Read More
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June Ash and Gordon Ash Interview, November 1, 2016
June Ash and Gordon Ash
June Ash describes the summer of 1952 when she and her husband, Rod Ash, worked as fire lookouts on the Big Swede Lookout in the Kootenai National Forest near Libby, Montana. Ash tells how they moved from Berkeley, California, after attending college for their lookout ... Read More
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Kay Rosengren Interview, August 23, 2018
Kay Rosengren
Kay Rosengren describes her experiences working with her husband Keith at Numa Ridge and Apgar lookouts in Glacier National Park. She tells how she and Keith came to Montana in part because he loved the outdoors. She talks about their friendship with the Park’s ranger ... Read More
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Leif Haugen Interview, January 5, 2022
Leif David Haugen
This interview spans Leif Haugen’s entire lookout career: Mount Morrell, Mt. Henry, Numa Ridge, and Thoma. Along with experiences on the lookouts, Leif discusses knowledge and experience he gained on how to live on a lookout and do a quality job; the Park Service and ... Read More
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Mark Hufstetler Interview, January 30, 2023
Mark Hufstetler
In this second interview, Mark focuses on the Flathead National Forest’s volunteer program, which he says is a “unique opportunity for the community” by having volunteers who do all the duties of regular lookouts for ten days to two weeks. He says the volunteers have ... Read More