Fire Lookout Secrets

The Cougar Pass Lookout in the Elliott State Forest as seen on February 21, 2020. Handrails and floor boards are rotten, so it would be dangerous to climb today. This picture was taken with a drone. It shows an open hatch hole on the roof that lets rain directly into the cabin. The hatch cover is on the ground beside the tower, and no one has bothered to replace it.

The Department of State Lands recently had a 3-foot deep ditch dug across the road leading to the Cougar Pass Fire Lookout Tower. This means people now have to hike up the mountain to visit the tower.

This sign and a wire fence surround the base of the Cougar Pass lookout.

Lookout Secrets

One of nature's many secrets -- and one we will never find out -- is what the Elliott forest would look like if its system of four fire lookouts hadn't kept such good watch over the forest. We know the forest was periodically swept by catastrophic fires (see the Fire page for more details) prior to the 1910s when the fire lookout system was established, and from Jerry Phillips, we know the Cougar Pass lookout saw and reported on three huge fires, all north of the Umpqua River: the Smith River Fire in 1938, Weatherly Creek in 1951, and the Oxbow in 1966. So it's a good guess that without these four lookouts, the Elliott forest would look quite different today.

Other secrets come from how the Department of State Lands has quietly let Elliott forest lookouts rot and be vandalized; then it decided they were dangerous and had them removed or set on fire -- a truly ironic fate for a fire lookout. Only one lookout remains on the Elliott, the dilapidated shell of the Cougar Pass lookout shown nearby. The other three lookouts exist only in a handful of historical photos, memories of senior citizens, and some written descriptions.

This pattern of neglect isn't unusual: Oregon once had over 800 active fire lookout towers, but today only a handful are still being staffed. Most of Oregon's fire lookout towers have decayed so badly that they've been deliberately destroyed: only about 200 are left standing, and most of those are in poor condition. This part of Oregon's heritage is rapidly being lost.

Photo credit: The US Forest Service photograph at the top of this page shows a lookout being consumed by fire. I've been unable to find photographs or descriptions showing or explaining how Elliott State Forest lookouts were removed: that was done with little or no fanfare -- yet another secret.

This screen-capture shows the Home page for the Cougar Pass Lookout Education Center, available at www.CougarPass.Org.

Cougar Pass Lookout Education Center

I found out about the Cougar Pass lookout from Bob Zybach (PhD, Oregon State University, Environmental Sciences) who has spent the last forty years researching and documenting the history of Oregon's forests. Bob and I traveled to see Cougar Pass together, and we prepared a proposal for a Cougar Pass Lookout Education Center (available at www.cougarpass.org).

On our trip, we discovered the Department of State Lands has been taking active steps to hide the Cougar Pass lookout from public view:

All roads signs leading to Cougar Pass have been removed. Since the Elliott has 500 miles of unmarked roads, and the Department of State Lands has removed signs throughout the Elliott's interior, this not only hides the Cougar Pass lookout, it also makes the forest dangerous for casual visitors who easily get lost among all the twisty, unmarked roads.
A 3-foot deep ditch has been dug so people can no longer drive to the lookout.
After someone hikes up the mountain to the lookout, a wire fence surrounds the lookout with a "Dangerous Building: KEEP OUT: Department of State Lands" sign.

In February 2020, we asked the Department of State Lands to look at our CougarPass.Org website and begin working with us to see how we might move forward to restore the Cougar Pass Lookout. The reply we received was:

"It looks like quite a few folks have dedicated significant time thinking about and planning a Cougar Pass Lookout restoration project. Because of the potential transfer of the Elliott to Oregon State University, the Department of State Lands is unable to dedicate time and resources to a potential project at this point in time."

I found out another secret later: Another group of volunteers lead by Howard Verschoor had repeatedly tried to renovate the Cougar Pass lookout from 1999 to 2003. You can read about that below.

Howard Verschoor sent me this picture of the Dean's Mountain fire lookout in the Elliott State Forest. This ground-based 16' x 16' cabin with a cupola was built on Dean's Mountain in 1920 as a replacement for the original "crude shake cabin." The shake cabin was built around 1914.

Howard Verschoor's memories

Howard Verschoor, director of the Oregon Chapter of the Forest Fire Lookout Association, remembers making a significant effort to restore the Cougar Pass lookout starting in 1999 and continuing through 2003 as follows:

We went down to Cougar Pass in 1999, and it was in bad shape and had been vandalized. At that time the lookout still had windows, furnishings, a bed and stove, but no Osborne range finder (though the base was still there). Trees had grown up around the tower so it was difficult to see out. We wanted to restore and staff it with volunteers. So I contacted ODF (the Oregon Department of Forestry which managed the Elliott State Forest at the time). ODF said, "We don't know who owns it," so they didn't want to do anything.

Next, we went down again to repair the vandalism: patch up the broken windows and repair the roof. After we did that, we contacted ODF again, and this time they said the tower belonged to the Coos Fire Protective Association, but Coos said, "We don't own it."

Next, ODF gave us the run-around again and suggested they might still want to staff it. They conducted a timber sale in the area, and that made it possible to see out again.

We didn't want to lose the Cougar Pass lookout to the same fate as the Roman Nose lookout that was demolished. But we kept getting put off and put off by ODF, so eventually we gave up.

Caulked Boots and Cheese Sandwiches is BY FAR the best historical reference on the Elliott State Forest, and the entire book is available for free on-line. Just click the image above and begin reading.

Roy Peairs, forester, and Elroy Carlisle, laborer, in 1956 at the old Trail Butte Lookout ground house. Photo by Jerry Phillips.

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.

This is a standard plaque for sites listed on the National Historic Lookout Register. If you click on the image above, you will be taken to the Cougar Pass Lookout's page within the National Historic Register's website.

National Lookout Historic Register

The Cougar Pass Lookout is listed in the National Lookout Historic Register. It's description in that register is:

The first structure on this site was a 30' L-4 wooden tower built in 1936. That was replaced with the present 50' treated timber tower with live-in Amort cab, which is presently occupied by packrats only.

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