Old Oregon Lookout
Towers
I cover
Mt. McLoughlin on this page, with links to some others. 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!
black and white image taken
about 1920 shows the original wooden structure erected in 1917.
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
The passing of
24 years have not been kind to the remains of the Mt. Pitt fire
lookout. In 1929, it 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 image
below dates from 1976.
Page
Last Revised 11/15/2006
Mountain
Lookout