Old Oregon Lookout
Towers-- Mt. McLoughlin page
I cover
Mt. McLoughlin on this page, with information and links about
other notable places. Note: on older maps McLoughlin was called
"Mt. Pitt." The lookout perched on the very highest
point, at a lofty 9,500 feet elevation, some 2,000 feet above
timberline!
Let's
begin with the original lookout, erected in 1917, this old black
and white image is from 1920.
Now let's
jump ahead forty-four years to the 1964 color photo below. During
the intervening time, the wooden beauty above had been destroyed
by the tumultuous summit winds and replaced in 1929 by a more
sturdy version with a native stone foundation. But after 35 years,
even that has been decimated.
And by 1976, after another twelve years of
harsh mountain weather, more decay has ensued, and now the wooden
floor we stood on in 1964 has vanished, leaving only a stone shell,
usually chock-full of snow even in summer. Color image below taken
by me in 1976.
Final
image taken by me in 2000, showing the near-total demise of this
classy lookout.
ghlin
Expanded content:
The High Cascades weather at nearly 10,000 feet has not been kind
to the Mt. Pitt fire lookout buildings! In 1929, there was a beautiful
wood-structure with classy 360-degree windows... It rooted itself to the summit via the durable
native rock foundation seen in the 1976 image. Previous to 1929,
a quaint two-story all-wood lookout had clung to the wind-blasted
summit since 1917 (see image at page top from Dave Bula's collection).
That wooden beauty was replaced by the more bullet-proof version
in 1929 due to the ferocious summit winds... The lookout building, like many of the other early
lookouts placed atop Oregon's highest peaks, proved to be a bad
idea, frequently unusable due to being either above the clouds
or within the clouds, thus making for poor viewing conditions
for the persons within trying to spot distant fires at much lower
elevations!...History buffs will note
that in those early days, the peak was named Mt. Pitt. Nowadays,
you'll find it named Mt. McLoughlin on the maps, after Dr. John
McLoughlin, one of Oregon's most well-known pioneer statesmen.
McLoughlin's pointy peak is Oregon's most southerly major Cascades
volcano.
In the image
from 2000 (see above), we are perched high in the sky at 9,500
ft... Medford, the Rogue River
Valley, Prospect and Butte Falls lie to our backs, as we look
eastward toward Harriman Lodge and Klamath Lake, which is a birder's
paradise. The shoulder of Pelican Butte rises about 8 miles away
in the 2000 image. Pelican Butte, at 8,000 ft., is the projected
home of a new ski resort that is locked in environmental controversy;
it is hoping to join Oregon's other major downhill skiing areas,
but the latest legal rulings look negative.
In the image below you
see a ruined log cabin in a meadow in the Mt. Hood National Forest.
It dates from about 1911, when it was the home of the forest fire
lookout on Lookout Mountain (about 9 air miles east of Mt. Hood).
During the daytimes, the lookout climbed to the 6525 ft. summit
of Lookout Mountain to search for fires with his alidade instrument.
During the nights, he slept in this high meadow on the north side
of the peak amidst the flowers and sounds of running waters. By
1914, a new cabin was constructed atop the peak, and gradually
the old cabin fell into ruin, although the time frame of that
is uncertain as maps from about 1930 show a "High Prarie
Ranger Station" at this location. My picture of the cabin
below dates from 1976, while the scan of the map is taken from
the 1931 version of the Oregon Skyline Trail map. Note that Mt.
Hood aleady has its western half protected in a "Mt. Hood
Primitive Area." (link to more from 1931 Map)
Page
Last Revised 6/15/2009
Mountain
Lookout