Cougar Pass Firewatchers

We only know of two people who staffed the Cougar Pass lookout: both were sisters. During the summer of 1979, Korianne Ramage was the firewatcher. Her sister took over for the summers of 1980 and 1981. They were just out of high school when they landed this job.

The fire-watch season began in mid-July and lasted to the end of September. The work day began at 11 in the morning and went to 8 p.m. The job was 7 days a week -- no holidays or weekends off -- but at least the fire watchers were paid overtime for any hours beyond 40-per-week. Overall, Meryni Ramage thought she was well paid.

Roughly every 15 minutes the firewatcher would walk around the cabin's catwalk, scanning the horizon for smoke plumes.

While the lookout tower had a two-way radio for reporting fires, it didn't have a telephone and wasn't served directly by the U.S. Mail service. Meryni Ramage reports that she spent her time reading books, listening to the radio, and on most days, someone would drop by to visit -- the Elliott State Forest is a popular place for hunters and other people who like the woods.

Jerry Phillips memories

Here's what Jerry Phillips has to say about the Elliott systems of lookouts (taken from Caulked Boots and Cheese Sandwiches, excerpts from pages 82-96):

Dean's Mountain Lookout

The Dean's Mountain Lookout was one of the oldest, longest-occupied, and best-known lookouts in all Oregon. To many people,, it was the only landmark in the Elliott State Forest they knew. Because of its fame and very long history, including its involvement with the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] program, I want to provide an in-depth review of its lively past.

After the Siuslaw National Forest was created, back in 1908, one of its first actions on the ground was to build a small number of lookouts to overlook the historically fire-ravaged coast range land it was mandated to protect. The earliest were built between 1910 and 1914, and one of those was on Dean's Mountain -- only 1,818 feet in elevation, but with a good 360-degree view, especially with nearly all the timber in the area having been killed in the 1868 Coos Bay Fire. A simple old-fashioned "ground house" sufficed nicely for the first 25 years.

Elk Peak

This, along with Dean's Mountain, were the two established and used by the U.S.F.S. bedtween about 1915 and 1929, when CFPA [Coos Forest Protective Association] took over the fire protection. Elk's Peak Lookout was, in the 1920s, a short pole tower and and a tent on the ground.

Cougar Pass

This was a 60-foot tower with a cabin on top, built by the CCCs in 1935, when their road construction reached and passed that point. It was a very important lookout, because it looked over a lot of high fire risk county. Northeast and southeast from there lay tens of thousands of acres of steep country, covered with old-growth fir timber and slash – all east of the fog belt, and much with poor ground access. Also, Cougar Pass could “cross” its azimuth shots of smokes with Scare Ridge in Western Lane and with Old Blue and Landers in the Douglas Forest Protective Ass’n District, and also with Dean’s Mountain (and later with Trail Butte and McKeever Butte in CFPA’s District).

Cougar Pass Lookout was manned annually through 1985, so had fifty years of usage, depending upon whether it was finished in time for actual use during the 1935 fire season.

The spring where the lookout got drinking water was to the northeast, about 200 feet below the CCC road, at the head of Cold Creek. This was the last active lookout on the Elliott State Forest. As I finished writing this book, in 1996, it was still standing, although it had not been used since about 1985, I understand. It was still serving as a radio repeater point, however, and could still see future lookout usage during critical times if some of the fast-growing Elliott Forest trees nearby were cut (again).

Cougar Pass was named by an Ash Valley big game hunter, who reportedly killed a number of cougars in this vicinity. As late as 1952, a bounty of some $60 each was being paid on cougars in Coos County. The CCC crew from Camp Walker built this tower when their road construction from their camp on Scholfield Creek reached this point. Their spur road to the tower hasn’t changed much in the intervening 60 years.

The Cougar Pass lookout saw and helped communicate on at least three huge fires during its existence – all north of the Umpqua: the Smith River Fire in 1938, Weatherly Creek in 1951, and the Oxbow in 1966.

Another interesting feature of Cougar Pass is its usage as a radio relay site. During its later years of service, around the late 1970s, I think, a gas-powered generator was installed, along with the radio repeater equipment, in a secure structure at the foot of the tower. This repeater served the Umpqua River canyon and the rough country within the Elliott Forest for all mobile radio traffic.

Trail Butte

This lookout point, known in early days as Flags Peak (for the wild iris growing on its south slopes), had a lookout house built on it by the Coos Forest Protective Assoc. in 1942. This happened, curiously enough, due to a demand by the Federal Government that it be done. When World War II began in December of 1941, the Government created a plan to detect any Japanese aircraft (called the AWS -- the Aircraft Warning Service). A government official looked at an old map and saw that Trail Butte was marked a having a lookout on it already (incorrectly). So that site became incorporated into the AWS plan -- even though it did not exist. ...

But it was a good place for a lookout in those days. Incendiary fires were still common in that area of the 70-acre area known as Burnt Ridge, lying just west of Trail Butte.