The Seamsters Union 

The topography of the Methow Valley, in north-central Washington, is a tight jumble. Sinuous and narrow, the Methow rises quickly from flat bottomlands to sparsely treed foothills, cliffs, and ridges, and quickly again into the North Cascades, where dense forests give way to jagged, rocky peaks. Taking in the view, it might not seem like a great place to jump out of an airplane.

But the Methow’s variety was exactly what the U.S. Forest Service was looking for in 1939, when it chose an airstrip in the valley as test ground for using parachutes to deploy firefighters to remote and rugged terrain. Today, there are about four hundred fifty smokejumpers stationed at bases around the West, including the thirty at the historic North Cascades base where American smokejumping began. In spring, they practice jumping over the Methow’s wildflower-speckled slopes. They test wind speed and direction by tossing streamers through the plane door, then one to four jumpers exit on each pass over their target—the first