Love of art, outdoors defines Keith Hoofnagle

At the age of 10, Keith Hoofnagle, now of Skamokawa was already a published cartoonist. Today, a 50th anniversary edition of one of his books, The Story of Linda Lookout, has been published and he's at work on another volume for the National Park Service, a collection of his cartoons.

His art defines him, but so does his love of the outdoors.

The Hoofnagle family was much like many northwest families. They liked to go camping. They would collect their gear and head to Mt. Rainier or the Olympics.

"Mostly national parks," Hoofnagle said.

When he was about eight or nine, the family was in the car and headed back to Marysville after camping in the Cascades. His mom pointed to a lookout on one mountain top and told the young boy, "They're guarding the forest up there."

"It was early evening," Hoofnagle said. "The person was lighting their lamp. They used to use old kerosene or white gas. It sparkled and then it looked like a star had landed on the mountain top."

Hoofnagle became enchanted by the vision and the idea that someone could spend an entire summer up there, out there.

Years later he would know that even in lookouts that were 10 or 15 miles apart, one watcher could light a candle and the other would see it clearly.

Hoofnagel published his first cartoon in the Washington Farmer magazine, now defunct, as a preteen. Before the magazine printed their last copy in 1971, he was doing covers for them.

"My grandmother had loved to get the Washington Farmer," Hoofnagle said. "It expanded and there was an Oregon Farmer, an Idaho Farmer and a Utah Farmer."

A couple times, the cover he created appeared on all three magazines.

The romance of spending a summer as a fire lookout never left him and as a high school graduate he tried to find employment with the Department of Natural Resources.

You're too young, they told him. It was true. He was a youthful high school graduate at 17. Applicants had to be 18.

Come back next year, they told him. And so he did.

While he waited he took some classes at WSU. He studied art with tentative plans to be an art teacher. However, the tentative plans could not compete with the desire that had been kindled that summer evening when he was eight or nine.

Hoofnagel applied to every one of the districts in the state of Washington. It wasn't long before he heard back from the Montesano district.

"I was accepted and went to their training session," Hoofnagle said. "When I had been hiking in the Cascades one of the lookouts was an old curmudgeon and another was a young fellow who was in college."

There were six fire lookouts in his district. To his surprise, he was the only single male.

"I think all of the watchers except two were returning and they were all older women," Hoofnagle said. "Except one. They were an old retired couple."

Foresters showed them how to use the fire finder and taught them how to use their radio, as well as the 10 and 2 codes that they would use and how to report a fire.

"It turned out that those older women had already spent multiple summers on lookout," Hoofnagle said. "They just charmed the socks off me. I just thought they were great. They loved the outdoors and they were really dedicated and knew what they were doing."

"They were mostly grandmothers," he continued. "Right off the bat, that's where Linda Lookout came from."

Later on as he did research for the 50th anniversary edition, he found out that women had been working as lookouts as far back as the 1910s.

"That was very rare," Hoofnagle said. "WWI brought in more. One woman on lookout was there with her husband who had been injured in the war. She was the main lookout but her husband was there with her. WWII came along and suddenly there were a lot more women working as lookouts."

More ladies were hired on fire lookouts during WWII than ever. Some foresters who reluctantly hired them were pleasantly surprised by their success.

"Women lookouts were particularly outstanding," said one district ranger. "They were much more on the job than the men."

-excerpt from the 50th anniversary

edition

When Hoofnagle wasn't watching for fire, he was drawing.

His character Linda Lookout is a blend of many things. He had watched the premiere of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Linda was much like one of the fairy godmothers, but she also looked something like a watcher at Arctic Lookout and another at Minot Lookout.

His third summer on Weatherwax Ridge he began to develop Linda Lookout.

"The lookout no longer exists," Hoofnagle said. "It was a really wonderful lookout on the southernmost foothills of the Olympics. My sun rose behind Mt. Rainier and it sat out on the Pacific Ocean. It was the highest lookout. It was only a couple thousand feet. but still you were up high enough. It was gorgeous.

The lookout had been built in 1956," Hoofnagle continued. "I went there in 1960 and it was in really good shape. It was at the end of an old logging road so I didn't see very many people."

That was also the summer that aerial reconnaissance began to be tested as a viable option for fire watching.

"It turned out hands down that the lookouts were better," Hoofnagle said, "but the state and feds decided this was cheaper, this is what we are going to do."

Seeing the writing on the wall, and wanting to continue to work at lookouts, Hoofnagle started sending applications to the Forest Service and the National Park Service.

And suddenly, he was getting attention for his work.

He got a visit from the DNR.

"They did a cover article on Linda Lookout," Hoofnagle said, still surprised after all these years.

Meanwhile, Yellowstone had offered him a job. They needed someone to work as a lookout on Mt. Holmes. It was an 11 mile, 10,000 foot, one way trek by foot or by horse, and the watcher would not be able to leave on the weekends. A packer came in once a week with supplies.

It was also really beautiful and quiet, Hoofnagle said. He had very few visitors. He spent five summers there.

"It was really an experience," he remembered. "It was going from what you think a lookout should be like to what a lookout was probably like 30, 40, 50 years earlier."

One August he even got snowed in.

The National Park Service was aware of his artistic talent and they took advantage. Three mules loaded his things up to the lookout. One pannier carried his personal items. The rest of the load was art supplies provided by Yellowstone who had asked him to create posters and charts and other things. The other employees on lookout were paid the same, but were not asked to do the extra work.

It all evened out in his mind when he was offered a lifelong dream; a full time job with the National Park Service.

"I felt like I was kind of being taking advantage of," Hoofnagle said, "but at the same time I was loving being up there. They made it up to me when I became a permanent ranger."

"I learned a lot as a ranger," Hoofnagle continued. "I helped the biologists on their wolf studies, or the trees and plants."

Hoofnagle is prolific. He did the original art work for Earth Day at WSU, where his work has now been archived. He did a children's book on park rangers and comic strips for papers, frequently of a political nature. He is currently working on another book for the park service, a collection of all his cartoons.

Hoofnagle's book The Story of Linda Lookout will be sold on amazon.com and also be available from Naturegraph Publishers. Books will be available at Redmen Hall. There will be a book signing at Redmen Hall, tentatively scheduled for February 27.