Firewatch: A Summer in the Shoshone

Firewatch opens in a bar in Boulder in 1975, where Henry meets Julia. The prologue begins as a text game, then unfurls 14 years of their life together before Henry leaves his hometown to become a fire lookout in Wyoming. By spring 1989 Julia has early-onset dementia, and Henry arrives with a failing marriage and a DUI on his record. Boulder is the life he is running from.

Location precision: The prologue's bar is not named; the pin marks Boulder, Henry's hometown.

Cody is the Wyoming town the game's characters talk about, with a rodeo every night in summer. Sean Vanaman, one of Firewatch's creators, moved here at nine and stayed until college, and the game's Wyoming is built from that kind of local detail. Cody calls itself the Rodeo Capital of the World, and the Cody Nite Rodeo is an annual amateur event. The Cody Stampede Rodeo is one of the largest in the United States, with a stampede, parades and fireworks. The game names the town; the rodeo grounds are real.

Location precision: The game names Cody and its nightly rodeo, not the ground; the pin marks the Cody Stampede rodeo grounds.

Visitor guidance: The Cody Nite Rodeo runs through the summer; the Cody Stampede is one of the town's biggest annual events.

Shoshone National Forest is the real setting: nearly 2,500,000 acres of Wyoming, and the first federally protected national forest in the United States. More than half of it is designated wilderness. Firewatch arrives a year after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, which burned 194,430 acres of the Shoshone after spreading from the park. The forest has over 500 lakes and 1,000 miles of streams and rivers. Henry's summer job is to watch this country for smoke, reporting what he sees to Delilah by radio.

Location precision: The game's Two Forks sector is fictional; the pin marks Shoshone National Forest as a whole.

Visitor guidance: Store food in bear country and check fire restrictions, especially in August and September.

Henry's first day begins at his tower, where Delilah's voice arrives over the walkie-talkie and sends him down to a lake to stop illegal fireworks. He comes back to find the tower ransacked. The game's towers were built to government specifications with standard lumber, and Clay Butte Lookout is a real counterpart: a three-story wooden structure begun by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1941 and finished in 1943. It stands in the northern Absaroka Range, sixteen miles east of Yellowstone. Two Forks belongs to the game; the shape of the job is real.

Location precision: Two Forks is fictional; the pin marks Clay Butte Lookout, a real tower of the same era in the same forest.

Visitor guidance: The tower is about half a mile north of U.S. Highway 212 at the end of FS Road 142, near Beartooth Pass.

Delilah sends Henry to a lake on his first day to deal with illegal fireworks. He finds two drunk teenage girls skinny-dipping, and they accuse him of leering; he can confiscate their fireworks and throw their boombox into the water. The lake is called Jonesy, and it exists only in the game; no source ties it to a real lake. Beartooth Lake, in the Beartooth Mountains on the forest's northern edge, stands in here for that high lake country. The Beartooth Highway crosses the range at Beartooth Pass, at 10,947 feet.

Location precision: Jonesy Lake is fictional; the pin marks Beartooth Lake as an example of the forest's high lakes, not a known model.

Visitor guidance: The stand-in lake lies in the Beartooth Mountains; U.S. 212 crosses the range over Beartooth Pass.

The meadow north-east of Jonesy Lake hides a fenced government research site. Henry breaks in and finds surveillance equipment and typewritten reports of his and Delilah's private conversations; someone later burns the camp. The game calls the area Wapiti Station, borrowing a real name: Wapiti Ranger Station, thirty miles west of Cody on the road to Yellowstone's east entrance. Built in 1903, it is the oldest ranger station in the U.S. Forest Service and a National Historic Landmark. The game's version does not look like it.

Location precision: Wapiti Station is a game location whose depiction does not resemble the real ranger station, which the pin marks.

Visitor guidance: The 1903 station stands on U.S. 14/16/20 between Cody and Yellowstone's east entrance.

On the way home Henry finds a locked cave and a shadowy figure watching him. Later, with a key found in a backpack, he enters Cave 452 and is locked inside; deeper in, he finds the decayed body of Brian Goodwin, the son of a former lookout. The cave is fictional. No source names a model; Mummy Cave, used here as a stand-in, is a real rock shelter on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, occupied from about 7280 BC to AD 1580 and first studied in 1962. Its burial, Mummy Joe, dates to about AD 800.

Location precision: Cave 452 is fictional; the pin marks Mummy Cave, a real rock shelter in Shoshone National Forest, not a known model.

An evacuation order goes out as the wildfire grows, and Henry hikes to Delilah's tower. She leaves on the rescue helicopter, and the two say goodbye by radio before Henry evacuates. The tower is called Thorofare, a real name from the most remote country in the contiguous United States. The real Thorofare lies near Bridger Lake, by the confluence of the Thorofare and Yellowstone Rivers. Firewatch is set a year after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, when 793,880 acres burned and the park closed to non-emergency personnel on 8 September 1988.

Location precision: Thorofare Lookout is fictional; the pin marks Thorofare Creek, the real drainage behind the name.

Visitor guidance: The Thorofare is reached only on foot or horseback; it is among the most remote country in the contiguous 48 states.