Amazing Fire Tower Cabin Stays True to History

Reader Contribution by Lloyd Kahn and Shelter Publications
Published on April 1, 2019
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Shelter Publications
Fire towers that guarded 1930s Montana lands represented a romantic ideal of life to this family, who built a fire tower cabin. Fire lookouts were always in the most inaccessible, most spectacular locations. They were a place where life and relationships were condensed to their essential elements, where nature overwhelmed and embraced those lives. The fire tower cabin had to become part of those landscapes.

The following post is an excerpt from Tiny Homes, Simple Shelter (Shelter Publications, 2012) by long-time Mother Earth News contributor Lloyd Kahn. In this book are some 150 builders who have taken things into their own hands, creating tiny homes (under 500 sq. ft.) — homes on land, on wheels, on the road, on water, even in the trees. Here is one of these builders, Mike Basich’s, story.

Fire Tower Cabin Front Deck

It was like “being hit by lightning,” according to the clients. Given 113 acres in Alpine Gulch in the Judith Mountains of central Montana, it was a dream come true for them, after searching for years for acreage like this.

The land already had a small log cabin on it. Located at the very bottom of the canyon, in a grove of old firs, it was always dark, cold, and claustrophobic. The clients wanted something else — light, sun and expansiveness. A forest fire that burned across part of the land in 1989 exposed just such a spot.

Sited about 70 feet above the valley floor, on the edge of a limestone ledge, the site has long views up and down the valley, seemingly hanging in space. But, it also has the intimacy of an aspen grove, and a meadow of wildflowers in the other direction. The cabin had to do a couple of other things for the clients: It had to relate to their cultural landscape, as well as the physical one.

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