How Fire Lookouts Slept Alone Above the Clouds, 1919 | History for Sleep

Fire lookouts slept on the tops of mountains, in small cabins and towers with windows on every side, a long way from anyone. In 1919 one of the very first women to do the job, a newspaper artist from Denver named Helen Dowe, kept the lookout on Devil's Head in the Colorado Rockies. This is one night of it, told slowly. We are on the highest point of the Rampart Range, nearly ten thousand feet up in the Pike National Forest, on the night of the 27th of September 1919, the night before thirty-two members of the Colorado Mountain Club drove up from Denver to climb the rock. Fifty-two quiet stops follow the night from the last light on the summit to the sun coming up over the plains, one every few minutes: the little windowed cabin on the rock and the cabin below it, the telephone and the evening call, the Osborne firefinder, what a lookout ate and how she slept, Helen's assistant Nina St. John, Hallie Daggett of Eddy Gulch, the thousands of letters, the glass houses of later years and the stool with glass feet, the pack strings, the aspens turning gold, Pikes Peak to the south, the stars of a September night and the planets rising one by one before dawn, and the morning call to the ranger: no smoke. Nothing here is frightening and nothing is a warning. The night is clear and still, the forest is quiet, and nobody is in any hurry. Nobody is in danger, nothing goes wrong, and none of it asks anything of you. Every image is a real photograph, many of them from the Forest Service archive of the 1910s to the 1950s and a few taken on Devil's Head in the summer of 1919, and full credits are in the pinned comment. The narration is a synthetic voice, unhurried and soft, over quiet music at a level meant to be slept through. This relaxing history documentary is ideal for: Falling asleep to calm history with soft music Listening to slow, checkable detail at bedtime Gentle nighttime learning for adults Relaxing narration for insomnia and restless nights Drifting off somewhere between the last light on the rock and the morning star In this video: How fire lookouts lived and slept on mountaintops, from tents and log cabins to glass-walled cabs Helen Dowe, the newspaper artist who became one of America's first women fire lookouts The Osborne firefinder, the telephone and the lookout's day Pack strings, aspens, Pikes Peak and the stars of a September night in the Rockies Fire lookouts today, and the people who still sleep in them Whether you came for fire lookouts, for the history of the American West, for calm narration at bedtime, or simply for a quiet voice and a night going by, this is made to be slept through. Subscribe to Small Hours Documentary for slow, careful documentaries made for sleep. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Fire Lookout on Devil's Head 2:59 Sunset on Devil's Head 7:48 A Newspaper Artist 12:28 The Young Moon Goes Down 17:05 The Cabin in Devils Half Acre 21:48 Night Falls on the Range 26:35 Supper at the Cabin 31:25 A Lookout's Bed 36:05 The Pleiades Rise 40:41 Thousands of Letters 45:28 Painting by Lamplight 50:14 Lookouts Across the West 55:13 Midnight on the Rock 59:58 The Pack String 1:04:53 Orion Comes Up 1:09:49 The Aspens Turn 1:14:40 The Plains Under the Stars 1:19:21 Sirius Rises 1:24:11 The Long Look 1:29:05 Frost in the Valleys 1:33:50 The Lookouts Who Wrote 1:38:34 Regulus and the Lion 1:43:19 The Climb to the Top 1:48:14 Astronomical Dawn 1:53:06 Birds of the Morning 1:57:56 The Morning Report 2:02:43 Lookouts Today