NEW MEXICO – Fire Lookout Harold Jenkerson passed away at the age of 84 in January. For the past 20 years, Jenkerson’s gentlemanly voice has transmitted over the radio from Davenport Fire Lookout in the Datil Mountains in New Mexico.

Jenkerson began his career as a fire lookout on the Gila National Forest in 1960 where he staffed Lookout Mountain on the Black Range District. Back then, fire lookouts were required to locate and put out the fires they spotted. Jenkerson tells about his first year as a fire lookout in a story he wrote, “I had to have a horse at the tower. If smoke appeared, I was the first to be dispatched to the fire,” he stated. “I was taken to the lookout with one day of instructions and told not to leave the tower for any reason unless released by the District Ranger.”

Jenkerson, as all fire lookouts, was excited when he spotted his first fire. He wrote, “When I reported my first fire the only words I heard from the district ranger was ‘Get that horse saddled up and go.’ The smoke was about three miles away. When I saw the smoke from the tower the landscape appeared flat. Once I found my direction toward the smoke, I soon lost sight of it, because the land was not flat. It was full of deep canyons. What I thought was a 30-minute ride turned out to be a three hour ride.”

By the time Jenkerson got his horse saddled and found the smoke, a load of smoke jumpers from Silver City, New Mexico, had been dropped near the fire. The smoke jumpers were scattered in a line along the burning edge of the fire. He was not sure what to do until the lead smoke jumper noticed him and asked if he had ever been on a fire. Jenkerson replied no, and the jumper took a fire rake and showed him how to build fire line.           

“People who staff fire lookouts are a rare breed of people. They are people who can handle isolation for long periods of time, Jenkerson wrote. “They are people who hear music in the breeze that moves silently through the long needles of the Ponderosa Pines. They are attracted to the stars at night and to the nature of the forest by day.”

Jenkerson was that rare breed. He checked on his fellow fire lookouts and crews in the field when they did not answer the radio. Although Jenkerson’s voice will no longer be heard transmitting over the radio from Davenport Fire Lookout, his many contributions as a fire lookout will not be forgotten.