Historic fire lookout ordered removed

Photo courtesy Washington Trust for Historic Preservation

Disappointing news: The Daily Herald reports that the historic Green Mountain fire lookout in the Glacier Peak Wilderness northeast of Darrington has been ordered removed by a federal judge, citing it a violation of the federal Wilderness Act.

The lawsuit, filed in 2010 by Wilderness Watch, alleged that the Forest Service violated the federal Wilderness Act, which doesn't allow for the use of motorized vehicles nor new construction in wilderness areas. Helicopters were used to haul out the old lookout and haul in what Wilderness Watch calls a new building.

The Forest Service has maintained that the lookout was restored, not reconstructed, and that the historical significance of the forest fire lookout made it an allowable project in the Glacier Peak Wilderness of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The lookout is on the national and state registers of historic places.

The lookout was built by a Civilian Conservation Corps crew in the summer of 1933, atop 6,500-foot-tall Green Mountain in the North Cascade Range. Each summer the lookout was staffed for the purpose of early reporting of forest fires.

While I understand the intent of the Wilderness Act, banning further human development and interference in what's left of the nation's pristine wilderness areas, the historian in me wonders why there is no exception to the rule for historic structures like the lookout. It's an important artifact in tracing how national parks and forests were developed at the turn of the 19th/20th century.

For further reading, check out this 2011 Herald article about the history of fire lookouts in the North Cascade Range.