Jacob Lake Lookout Tower is an 80-foot steel lookout tower with a 7-foot by 7-foot steel cab on top, erected in 1934 as part of a broader U.S. Forest Service effort to improve fire detection and control over the nation’s timber reserves. After the Forest Service was established in 1905, fire guards first patrolled forests on horseback and used simple tree-mounted platforms to spot and report fires. Permanent lookout stations and towers were later established on prominent points, with early examples built from local logs or lumber. Lookouts used Osborne fire-finders to locate fires, and telephones helped them report fires quickly before radios became the most common means of communication. In the early 1930s, the Forest Service developed a region-wide plan for fire detection and control that proposed tower designs and locations to provide complete visual coverage of the landscape. Combined with labor from the Civilian Conservation Corps, this plan made the 1930s the nation’s most active period of lookout tower construction, and Jacob Lake Lookout Tower is typical of the standard steel towers and cabs built during that era. The site is listed on the National Historic Lookout Register, which recognizes fire lookout sites, structures, and towers for their historic and cultural significance to forest fire detection and promotes their protection in cooperation with federal, state, and private forestry agencies and landowners throughout the United States.