Remember When

Continued from last week...

• Gem Peak – 8 miles SW of Noxon. It started as a camp lookout with a 15-foot pole platform. 1939, 20-foot pole tower L-4 cab. 1964, 30-foot tower with a R-6 flat cab. Staffed into the 1970s. Now available for rent on the Recreational Rental program

• Government Mountain – 3 miles NE of Noxon. Established with a cabin in 1930. Fifty-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1931, abandoned in 1950.

• Green Mountain – 8 miles N of Trout Creek. Developed as a camp in 1933, 50-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1936, destroyed in 1966.

• Loveland Peak – 3 miles W of Trout Creek. Fifty-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1934, destroyed in 1960.

• Minton Peak – 8 miles W of Trout Creek. Ten-foot pole tower with a L-4 cab built in 1932. In the 1950s, 10-foot treated timber tower with a L-4 cab. Last staffed in 1973. A replica was built in 2011 and was added to the Recreational Rental program.

• Pat's Knob – 6 miles S of Plains. Twenty-foot pole tower with L-4 cab was the first lookout built there in 1934, it was destroyed in 1968 and replaced by a cupola trailer. The present 10-foot concrete base topped by a R-6 flat cab was built in 1976 and is staffed in summer.

• Priscilla Peak – 11 miles NE of Thompson Falls. Cupola cabin built in 1929 was used for emergencies into the 1970s. It is in poor condition and is currently wrapped with a fire protective blanket because of the Thorne Creek fire.

• Richard's Peak – 21 miles NE of Thompson Falls. It was established in 1925 with a cupola cabin, the present 10-foot concrete base topped with an R-6 flat cab was built in 1960. It is staffed by the Montana DNRC.

• Seven Point – Ten miles E of Trout Creek. Built in 1930 Seven Point had the last remaining gable-roofed L-4 cab on a 10-foot tower in the Northern Rockies region. It was staffed until 1973, then abandoned. It was restored in 1966 by the Passport in Time Project but burned down in 2006.

• Sex Peak – Eight miles S of Trout Creek. The peak was named by forester I.V. Anderson and Harry Baker, supervisor of the Cabinet National Forest in the 1920s. The rumor most widely believed is that it was named after their topic of conversation that day. It lived up to its name when a patrol plane buzzed the lookout at eye level in the 1960s and found two lovers stark naked on the rocks. The first cab was a 1930 vintage L-4. This was replaced in 1948 by the present L-4 cab, and was staffed through the mid-1970s. It was refurbished and placed on the Recreational Rental program in 1986.

• Squaw Peak (now named Star Mountain) – Ten miles NW of Noxon. In 1907, it was the first forest lookout on the then Cabinet National Forest and in the state of Montana. It was a tent camp just below the summit. Three years later, Noxon's first ranger, Granville "Granny" Gordon and his wife Pauline built the stone cabin that still stands at the edge of the talus below the existing lookout, which was still there in the 1980s. 1930, L-4 cab on stone base. 1952, L-4 cab. The Political Correctness Police renamed the summit Star Mountain in 2004.

• Taft Summit – Seven miles ENE of Lookout Pass is in Sanders County. A 35-foot pole platform tower was built in 1909. Two of its legs burned in the Great Fire of 1910. In the 1930s an L-4 tower was built but destroyed in the 1950s. There was also a crow's nest 1/2-mile east which is still there.

• Twenty Odd Lookout – Three miles NE of Trout Creek. This cupola cabin was built in 1920 and destroyed in 1955.

• Two Trees – Eighteen miles NNE of Thompson Falls. Ten-foot pole L-4 tower was built in 1935 and destroyed in 1963.

• Vermillion Peak – Twelve miles N of Thompson Falls. Ten-foot pole L-4 tower was built in 1935 and destroyed in 1963.