Trails of the Past: Historical Overview of the Flathead National Forest, Montana, 1800-1960

Introduction

The 1910 fires emphasized the need for better backcountry communications. In the following decades, the Forest Service accelerated its phone line construction program and looked into other methods of communication. By 1939, the Flathead National Forest had 1,675 miles of phone line (Shaw 1967:2). As early as the 1930s, however, the Forest Service was beginning to use radios for backcountry communications. Region One set up a high-powered short-wave radio network, but this was shut down in 1941 in favor of portable radios.

Other communications methods that the Forest Service experimented with early on were not nearly as successful as phones. The agency experimented with carrier pigeons until 1922. The heliograph was tried in many places in the 1910s, including the Flathead National Forest. The system used one or two tripods, two mirrors, and a shutter to flash a message in code, and it could reportedly be seen as far as 50 miles away (see Figure 58). Problems encountered included the need for sunlight, the confusion caused by heat waves, the necessity of someone to be watching for the signal, and the difficulties of remembering the code and adjusting the mirrors for signaling (USDA FS "Early Days" 1976:148; Gray 1982:11-13).

Figure 58. Harry Gisborne using a double-tripod heliograph to send a message from a high ridge on the Wenatchee National Forest, 1915 (from Hardy 1983:2).

Poignant reminders of an earlier communications era are the occasional phone-line insulators and the coils or strands of #9 telephone wire found in the woods, often leading to lookout points that no longer have lookout buildings on them. Thirty-nine miles of backcountry telephone line are still in use within the Bob Marshall Wilderness along the South Fork of the Flathead; this is probably the longest section of Forest Service phone line in working order in the country.

Telephone

Because forest rangers and guards traveled so much in the backcountry, the Forest Service had to develop methods of communicating in remote areas. The telephone was the first method of communication. The first Forest Service phone line was built in 1906 on a forest reserve in Wyoming, and the agency soon developed the unusual practice of entering into private phone contracts. Residents were allowed to use Forest Service phone lines in exchange for working as per diem fire patrol personnel. Forest Service rangers maintained and also built the private phone lines that they used (Gray 1982:8).

Settlers did not always cooperate as well as the Forest Service would have liked. For example, in 1922 a settler in Good Creek had his phone removed for abuse of the privilege, and the next year he was accused of "maliciously" cutting the line (27 April 1924 memo, Flathead 1920-23 Inspection Reports, RG 95, FRC).

Most of the Forest Service phone-related equipment for field use was either based on American Telephone and Telegraph Company equipment or was purchased from that company. At first, the Forest Service used single-wire grounded-circuit phone lines with split tree insulators. R. B. Adams of Region One designed a hand-held portable phone that could be clipped on the phone line in the woods, and a "howler" that notified crews someone was trying to reach them. In the 1910s the national forests concentrated on building main trunk and spur lines connecting ranger stations, supervisor's offices, lookouts, and guard stations. Region One had a telephone engineer by 1915, and the Telephone Handbook was published that year (Gray 1982:v, 10; Coats 1984:2, 4).

The first phone line on the Flathead National Forest was built in 1908 to connect Kalispell and Coram (there was no commercial phone service between Kalispell and Columbia Falls then). In 1910 the line was completed to Spotted Bear, and in 1912 it was extended to Big Prairie (FNF "General Report" 1918). The 39-mile phone line along the South Fork from Black Bear cabin to Danaher cabin is today probably the longest operating backcountry Forest Service phone system in the United States.

The Spotted Bear Ranger Station soon became the center of the Flathead National Forest telephone system. Five lines terminated there, converging from Swan Lake, Kalispell via Coram, Big Prairie, Three Forks, and the Spotted Bear Lookout (see Figure 59). In 1910 a phone line from Swan Lake to Spring Slide Mountain on the Swan Range was built, and two years later the line was extended up the Swan Valley. (In 1906, construction of the phone line up the Swan River was given up on account of a shortage of rangers who could be spared to do the work.) In 1913 and 1914 the first phone line along the Middle Fork was built. Officials in the newly designated Glacier National Park were making similar efforts; in 1911 the Park reported 42-1/2 miles of phone line and 9 phones (FNF "General Report" 1918; 28 November 1906, "Reports of the Section of Inspection," entry 7, box 4, RG 95, NA; Clack 1923b; Logan 1911:9).

Figure 59. Forest Service worker talking on the telephone in the Spotted Bear lookout (courtesy of Flathead National Forest, Kalispell).

The Forest Service first used a fine, insulated wire for telephone lines, but this proved to be too easily broken. For decades after, the Forest Service used No. 9 galvanized wire, mounted in insulators that broke free when a tree fell across the line. Some sites were served with "outpost wire" (steel and copper wire from World War I that could be tossed onto bushes and low limbs). Emergency wire was strung to fires, the route blazed from the fire to the nearest phone line. At the fire camp there would be a wall phone mounted in a wooden box or an iron mine phone and a ground rod with clamp (Caywood et al. 1991:38; Taylor 1986).

The Forest Service used a variety of phones, including wooden wall phones, Adams portable phones, and iron mine phones. All the phone lines were located and built along trails or roads so they would be easier to patrol and maintain. Patrol points and strategic locations that required an outside telephone used iron mine phones (see Figure 60). Temporary camps could hook into a line by twisting the phone wire around the phone line and hooking the other end to a ground (an old Army bayonet was often used as the temporary ground). Grounded lines at lookouts often had to be strung down to a stream, because the ground needed to be damp where it was grounded. New batteries were installed in the phones about once a season. The lines could have windfall limbs lying on them, or even be under 14" of snow, and still work (Taylor 1986; Coates 1984:5-6, 13).

Figure 60. Alidade stand and iron mine phone at Six Mile lookout, Flathead National Forest, ca. 1920 (courtesy of Flathead National Forest, Kalispell).

Every spring a major job on each ranger district was telephone line maintenance (see Figure 61). Some of the terrain in the Flathead National Forest presented particular challenges to phone crews. For example, in the Middle Fork the line ran through 7 miles of snowslide area on a steep south slope, averaging about one mile above the river, in a twice-burned area with only scattered trees along the rim. Line maintenance there was a real problem, as winter slides wiped out the line regularly. In 1936 the district tested a new method, after deciding that going underground was too expensive. They used long spans averaging 500' in length on poles that were hand-logged into place and then guyed. The line was hung 30-50' above the ground in the most severe slide areas. As a result, many fewer lines went down over the winter (Root 1937:34-35).

Figure 61. Forest Service worker repairing telephone line after Hay Creek fire, 1926 (courtesy of Flathead National Forest, Kalispell).

Three men were used for building a phone line. The line locator blazed the route. Another man selected and blazed the hang trees, and the third man marked which side of the hang tree the wire should go on. The 80-pound rolls of wire were then dropped along the route about every 1/4 mile. Two men strung the wire, pulling it along the route, while the third man tended the reel. Two men then climbed and trimmed the branches off the hang trees up to about 20', and the ground man put on the split tree insulators (two insulators wrapped with tie wire) and fastened them to a light rope on the climber's belt. Then they cut the trees and branches to give about 3' clearance on each side of and above the line. Solid white insulators were used until the late 1920s, but wire had to be cut to replace them and splices would hang up in them. All through the 1930s the solid white insulators were replaced with brown split tree insulators. When a tree fell onto the line, the slack in the span (ideally about 1/4 the height of the hangs) would allow the tree to fall without pulling the insulators out. In the 1940s nicopress splices came into use: these were 3-4" lead tubes that were crimped against the wire (Taylor 1981; Coates 1984: 13).

In 1937 the conversion of the grounded line to metallic line composed of two more circuits was debated. Forest supervisor Urquhart was opposed to this plan. He felt that falling trees would put metallic line out of commission easily, and that, unlike metallic circuits, "Almost any hillbilly can repair a grounded circuit in a manner which will make conversation possible." CCC labor was used to build several metallic (two-wire) lines, which had better tonal quality, but after the program ended the Forest Service had trouble maintaining the lines. Some were sold, others torn down (13 April 1938, Inspection Reports, Region 1, 1937-, RG 95, FRC; Coates 1984:122-23).

Forest Service phone lines fell out of use because of the end of the CCC program, the coming of FM radio systems, and the conversion of many commercial telephone exchanges to dial (which most Forest Service lines could not adapt to). As wages and the cost of phone lines increased due to increasing labor costs, radio became relatively cheap (Coates 1984:35-36, 41). The switch to radio released many men from the spring task of maintaining the phone lines, and unlike phones, radio could be used with aircraft and with people on the fireline.

Radio

Region One strongly favored aerial observation of fires, and R. B. "Ring Bell" Adams of the regional office made the first efforts to demonstrate the usefulness of radio on air patrols on a large scale. During the summer of 1919 the practicality of radio was demonstrated, although several problems had not yet been solved (Gray 1982:16, 25-27). The Forest Service tested the radio in air patrols in the 1920s to eliminated the need for planes to land or drop a parachute with a message.

By 1922, Adams was able to talk on a radio from the Spotted Bear Ranger Station to Missoula (a distance of 138 miles), and one time he reached Missoula from Coram (a distance of 200 miles). Although these demonstrations were impressive, by agreement with AT&T the Forest Service was required to use commercial phone lines whenever they were available. (In fact, the radio network set up between the Supervisors' Offices and Missoula may have been illegal.) (Clack 1922:9; Gray 1982:99).

In 1928 a forester near Missoula demonstrated his homemade wireless transmitter-receiver to the Chief Forester. This led to the establishment of the Forest Service Radio Laboratory in Portland, Oregon. For the next 20 years a small group of men designed highly effective portable radio sets for the use of Forest Service workers on the fireline (Gray 1982:v).

Dwight Beatty, a Forest Service employee, designed a portable radio, a semiportable radio, and a temporary or field-base station. His radios were designed to be simple to operate, rugged, and reliable. By the fall of 1930 he had convinced the Forest Service of the benefits of his radio. The radio was developed by the Forest Service because the agency's needs were different from those in other sectors, and the market was small so industry did not pursue it. Radios had several advantages for the Forest Service over phones, including lack of reliance on fixed lines, relatively private conversations, and the elimination of delays caused by a backlog of calls at the local switchboard. Also, phone lines were often destroyed by fire. Beatty's SP 1930 was economical and portable, and the early models used Morse code rather than voice transmission (Gray 1982:11, 34-35, 44-46, 108).

The Radio Lab in Portland favored low-power portable radios, but Region One instead established point-to-point contact via interforest networks, emphasizing high-power fixed-base stations and redefining semiportable radios. Common transmission distances in Region One were 50-100 miles. Men were not expected to carry radios on the fireline, but they relied instead on the more expensive system of network radio with semiportable sets in ranger stations, lookout buildings, and guard locations. During the 1930s, Region One hired ham radio operators from Missoula, Spokane, and other areas to work the radios on large fires on an emergency basis (Gray 1982:149, 156, 175; R1 PR 683, 22 January 1936).

In 1936, the Region One short-wave radio network handled 2,700 communications in 92 days. The network covered all of Montana, Idaho north of the Salmon River, and northeastern Washington. That year was the first time in the Region that an aerial observer could report his findings directly to the ground and receive instructions (R1 PR 757, 24 October 1936; R1 PR 760, 31 October 1936).

In 1941 the Washington Office ordered Region One to shut down its network radio system in favor of portable radios for fire control. World War II and new technological developments made the issue moot, however. After the war, the Region had a mix of both network and portable radios, and it was required to obtain approval from Portland before operating on its own. In 1946 the Forest Service converted to FM (Gray 1982:183, 191, 205, 207, 210).

Some areas did not receive radios until relatively late. For example, the Spotted Bear lookout did not use radios until 1947 or 1948. Radios apparently did not provide reliable service at all locations. A 1956 inspection report on the Big Prairie Ranger District mentioned the recent construction of a phone line to Pendant Lookout plus other older lines and commented, "Since radio is uncertain and scattered, it appears as if these lines are justified" (Funk 1981; 24PW1003, FNF CR).