We learn about people in different ways. Some we read about, some we have met in person, and of course in this digital age we meet people virtually. I was a seasonal worker at the Seeley Lake Ranger District in the 1960s, and one person that I knew only by voice over the Forest Service radio was Dorothy Taylor.
It seems strange in this day of fire patrol planes to learn that in 1966 the Seeley Lake District alone had four fire lookouts: Falls Point, East Spread, Morrell (built in 1962) and Double Arrow. Dorothy was our Double Arrow lookout from 1952 to 1971. If we were inside the Seeley Ranger Station in the late afternoons we would hear Dorothy check in with the Lolo Forest dispatcher in Missoula. How did Dorothy come to be the voice of Double Arrow Lookout for 19 years?
She was born in Sheridan, Wyoming in 1903, and came to Missoula in 1918 to attend what was then Montana State University. She then spent many years teaching in small rural schools in western Montana. In 1949, while teaching in Lone Pine, the local district ranger was looking for people to staff his lookouts. Dorothy applied, and began her 22-summer career as a U.S. Forest Service lookout. Her first location was Coney Peak on the Plains Ranger District, a lookout that was closed many years ago, although the footings are still visible on Google Earth.
Dorothy would have seen some real changes in Seeley Lake during her years here: electricity coming to the valley, a timber industry that saw hundreds of loggers in the woods every day and a tourism industry that was growing every year. This meant that a lookout that was easy to get to, like Double Arrow Lookout, would get more visitors than the others. Dorothy once said she was as much a public relations person as she was a fire lookout.
During the 1958 season Dorothy had 430 visitors to the lookout. Half a dozen years later, in an interview in the 1960s, Dorothy said she had had 875 visitors the prior year. It should be noted that while electricity had been in the valley for over 10 years, it was only in the mid-60s that Double Arrow Lookout was electrified by the Forest Service, meaning Dorothy could have a refrigerator.
Fires that broke out in our valley were often visible to both Morrell (manned for many years by Bob Haight) and Double Arrow lookouts. We seasonal employees would sometimes speculate that perhaps there was some rivalry between the two, as to who got credit for calling in the smoke first. We will never know the answer to this, but we do know that for 19 years when the lookouts checked in at the end of the day, it was Dorothy Taylor’s voice reporting from Double Arrow.
As happens so often when looking more deeply into people from our past, we find that there was another dimension to Dorothy. She was an accomplished artist and an involved community volunteer in Missoula. She was a member of the Montana Institute of the Arts and an officer of the Missoula Rose Society.
Dorothy died in 1982 at the age of 79, 11 years after her last summer on the lookout. Given her artistic and volunteer activities, we assume she had a fulfilling retirement. She certainly must also have had many stories to share with friends about her years in Seeley Lake on the Double Arrow Lookout.
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