Who Would have thought?

[Aerosled]

That there once was a Forest Service Pole Lookout Platform on Devil's Table. Its between the main Rattlesnake and Little Rattlesnake up off Chinook Pass highway. Note the Sign says Rainier National Forest. Established in 1907 it was divided between the Columbia National Forest and the Snoqualmie National Forest in 1933. These were placed in areas where rangers could hike to to get a better view of areas the regular Lookouts couldn't see. Meeks table in the background.

Looking at the west edge of Devil's table from Cow Puncher Ridge. The platform would have been at the far end.

Meeks table in the upper right hand quadrant.

The snow capped peaks are Nelsons Ridge

Today you can drive to the spot where the Platform was

Copy and paste these coordinates into the search box on Google Earth or Google Maps to see the exact spot. 46 46 29.32, -121 02 48.29

 

[Aerosled]

Devil's table aerial photo taken July 1, 1949

You can see all the Naches Ranger District Fire Lookouts painted by the same artist displayed on the wall in the front office of he Naches Ranger Station in Naches, WA.

My wife was on Little Bald from1970 to 1973

 

[Aerosled]

Tumac

South of the summit of White Pass Near twin Sisters Lakes, Tumac was on the Columbia national Forest. I was up there on a Snowmobile in 1971. Before it was the William O Douglas Wilderness. The only thing left was the Horse hitching rail. 1950 Photo.

 

[Aerosled]

I can't seem to be able to edit my post. Tumac is North of white pass not south.

 

[Aerosled]

Timberwolf Mountain, Built in 1931, burned in 1975

1957

Some before and after the Scheinder springs fire in 2021.
Looking North at Timberwolf from Cash Prairie Before

After, note the meadow in the upper right corner is still green. The lookout kept a horse there in the old days

Looking south up the Rattlesnake Creek Drainage from Timberwolf before

After

The Timberwolf Horse barn in the meadow below the lookout. The lookouts also got their water from a spring in the meadow,
Before

After

The Lookout Outhouse survived the fire. I find it to be handy every time go up there. Bring your own toilet paper.

 

[Aerosled]

I did a little more research looking in my scrap books and lookout books. I found a little more information about this drawing of a Lookout Platform on Devil's table. The Artist, Earl Brown, started working for the Forest Service on the Tieton Ranger District on White Pass in 1959. He drew this picture from verbal descriptions of older Forest Service employees who remembered it.

 

[Aerosled]

Jumpoff Lookout is the only Fire Lookout still standing on the Naches Ranger District. It sits on the north end of Short And Dirty Ridge which is named after a sheep herder named Short and Dirty Cash who tended sheep here and on Cash Prairie on Bethel Ridge. A cupola Lookout was built in 1923 then replaced with an R6 Flat Cab in 1958.

Jumpoff seen from near Kloochman Rock trail in 2018.

The drive to Jumpoff is one of the most scenic drives in the mountains west of Yakima. Head up White Pass and Take a left on the first road across the bridge just past windy Point campground. Mid June is best for wild flowers. This trip was June 14, 2019

After a short climb up several switch backs Mount Rainier peaks out and the Bitter Root are blooming.

Mount Rainier and Nelson Ridge.

It is exciting to see what is around the next bend. Lupine Lining the road.

An even better view of Mount Rainier.

And there it is.

Lunch time with a view.

Jumpoff Meadows directly below, then a little out to the left is Lost lake, then Kloockman Rock and Rimrock lake.

Panoramic photos taken from Jumpoff in 1929

Looking southeast

Looking northwest

Looking south. Note the hitching rails for the supply packer's pack string.

 

[Aerosled]

Miners Ridge. Named in the late 1800s for all the mines on the ridge.

Me at the lookout in 1970

It's a beautiful drive up the Bumping River and past the dam and turn left on the Granite lake road.

Granite Lake

Brook Trout

Past Granite lake the road gets really rough. A two wheel drive pickup or an SUV is not going to make it.

Mount Rainier. In 1970 when I was up there the snags from the Red Rock Fire in 1940 were still standing on the ridge in the foreground. My Great Uncle was conscripted by the Forest Service in Naches to fight the fire. They had to hike in up the trail from the head of bumping lake.

Crag Mountain

Carlton Pass. This is a low elevation pass with an ideal grade to build a railroad. It was proposed along with Snoqualmie for a pass over the cascades. Luckily they chose Snoqualmie.

Looking east at Nelson Ridge. Mount Aix on the far left and Bismark Peak on the far right.

Charles Hubbell was a world famous aviation artist born in 1889. In 1939 he started producing calendars of his best paintings. Each year had a theme. In 1950 the theme was "The New Breed". The month of August painting was "The New Towerman". A 1948 Cessna 140 flying over a small forest fire. Airplanes were beginning to replace lookouts for fire detection. By the 1960s the US Forest Service considered the abandoned lookouts as an attractive nuisance and started burning them.

Miners Ridge Lookout burned April 1972

 

[Aerosled]

Goat Peak, called American Ridge Lookout to avoid confusion with Goat Peak Lookout near Cle Elum. It's on American Ridge between the american River and the Bumping River. I was up there once in 1968 on horse back working trails for the Forest Service. That fall the packer rode up and burned the Lookout.

Looking north at American Ridge from Little Bald Mountain Lookout, Fifes Peaks in the background.

Bob Ford in 1944. Look closely you can see a shovel handle sticking up out of his back pack. He was a Lookout Fireman. His job included putting out any fires within a mile of the lookout. He grew up in Goose Prairie and would ride his horse up to the lookout. He would then turn the horse loose and it would go home by it's self.

In 1946 when Jack Nelson retired Bob took over the gate keeper position at the Bumping lake Dam.
The Lodge (Resort) Jack and kitty Nelson built when Jack Retired

Bob was a self taught mechanic and electrician. He built this generator that is silent and runs 24 hours a day from May through November each year while the current owners of the Lodge live there.

In 1972 I was on a helitack crew at the old Naches Ranger Station on Chinook Pass. We had a Hughes 500 parked in the horse pasture and prided ourselves on being fast at taking off and getting to reported fires. Little Bald Lookout, the office, and all the residences were connected to a crank telephone system. A lighting storm came through and Little Bald Lookout called in a smoke to the dispatch office on the phone. from the time the Lookout spotted the smoke until 3 of us were on the fire was 10 minutes.

The pilot landed and let us off close to the fire and took off to return to the Ranger Station. Just after he lifted off he radioed that he had a chip light on and was landing. He landed on the first switch back at the bottom of the Chimpmung Creek road. The helicopter had the road blocked so a pickup couldn't get past it. Luckily the forest service had a cushman trackster that could get by the helicopter so they sent a guy up there tp pick us up after we had the fire out.

The hughes 500 when we were doing some work for the Park Service up on Mount Rainier

 

[Aerosled]

Little Bald Mountain Lookout. Built in 1934 It accidentally burned to the ground in 1978 due to a propane leak on the Lookout's day off.

My wife was on Little Bald from 1970 through 1973. The Flag was tattered badly when see first went up there so One day she was looking around in the attic and found a 48 star flag still in the original package so she took down the old flag and put up the 48 star flag as seen in this photo in 1970.

She was fearless in those days and climbed down the cliffs a little ways to take this photo.

A rainbow and the Larch turning yell in the fall

Snow on the 5th of July 1970

The road to the Lookout and nelsons Ridge covered in snow in the background

The desk and a two channel radio

Looking out the window at Old Scab Mountain. Note the red hard hat. In those days Lookouts were either GS-3s or GS-4s. The 4s were Lookout Firemen and higher paid. Part of their duties was to take action on any fire within a mile of the Lookout. Back then women were not considered capable of fighting fires so they were all 3s. She had attended fire guard school earlier that summer so was hired as a Lookout Fireman. The first one on the Forest

The Osborne Fire Finder.

The Lookout puppy and Crank Telephone

Photo taken by the crew helitack crew on a close fly by. The 121 10 painted on the roof is the longitude, the Latitude is painted on the other side. Not many people know that.

Little Bald Spring where she got her water.

The District Fire Management and pilot of 43Fox stopped by for coffee one morning

A logging crew brought an injured Logger up to the lookout. They had called for the Mast helicopter from the Yakima Fireing center and this was the best place for helicopter to land.

Loading the patient into the helicopter

In August 1973 the district helicopter crashed near Shoe lake in the Goat Rocks Wilderness while dropping water on a small fire. The Pilot was rescued by the Mast helicopter. He recovered and continued to fly helicopters for the Washington National Guard including the search and recovery missions after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in May 1980.

Poor Old 43Fox

This Photo was taken by my wife a few days later

 

[Aerosled]

This is a drawing of a typical Lookout interior by Earl Brown. Note in the lower right corner there is a stool with glass insulators on the legs. The theory was that standing on the stool during a lightning storm would protect you from being struck by lightning. They called it the Glass Stool. Edward Abby (Google Him, he was a lookout) had a chair with insulators on the legs that he called the "Electric Chair".

I have one in my living room as a curiosity. It's also works as a good step stool to reach stuff on the top shelf of the cabinets.

When we retired we lived in South Central Oregon. My wife took on another lookout job on Cinnamon Butte near Diamond lake. She had a tall glass stool to sit on during lightning storms. One time during a lightning storm Lightning came in an open window in the lookout and struck the Osborn Finder. That was a good lesson. Lighting follows air currents. Keep your windows closed during lightning storms.

Cinnamon had great views in all directions. An office with a view. Mount Thielson.

Thielson taken from out on the catwalk.

Mount Bailey

Diamond Peak

Lemolo Lake

Elk on the helispot below the Lookout

Better run, a helicopter's coming

The helicopter rappellers were working on a fire near by.

Long Lining a blivit (75 gallon water bag) to the crew on the fire.

Cinnamon Butte Lookout at night

 

[Aerosled]

Blue Slide Lookout. It sits on Divide Ridge at the south end of Short and Dirty Ridge. The site is named for a bluish landslide that slid into the South fork of the Tieton River near Gray Creek.

In 1942 a cupola lookout built in 1925 was hauled to Blue Slide from Darland Mountain on a truck.

Sitting on the new site at Blue Slide

Just 4 years later the Copula was replace with a Flat cab similar to Jumpoff but on a 30 foot wooden tower. This is probably the last photo ever taken of the Blue slide flat cab.

We were up there the next week and someone had cut the guy cables on the lookout and it had been blown over the cliff.

looking at the big clear cut where the Forest Service tried to turn Pine Grass Ridge into a tree nursrey.

Darland Mountain and the "Super bowl" , Mount Adams in the distance.

The Goat Rocks Wilderness and Gilbert Peak in the distance

The bare ridge is Short and Dirty Ridge

Mount Rainier

The Lookout sat on top of this rock.

The Kit garage has been converted into a snowmobiler warming hut. In about 1970 I and another guy were up there at night in a blinding snow storm. I hit a stump hidden under the snow and broke a tie rod end on my Elan. We left the Elan in the garage and rode double on his 399 Olympic. We had unloaded at Tree Phones and It was snowing so hard I had to walk ahead with a flashlight to find the way across the top of Darland. When we got back to yakima we woke up the Ski Doo dealer and took a tie rod end off a new Elan then returned to rescue my Elan. It was an all nighter.

Google earth with location pins

 

[Aerosled]

Round Mountain Lookout. Located on the old Tieton Ranger District in the Goat Rocks Wilderness about two miles west of Clear Lake on White Pass. It was built in 1935 on a 20 foot wooden tower.

This Photo taken in 1941 shows The Lookout Tower plus an earlier lookout built on the ground. Hikers have found the concrete pillars that the tower sat on plus remains of the foundation from the ground lookout. Look closely in the trees at the bottom left of the photo there is a rider on a horse and a pack horse behind him. It's probably the district packer delivering supplies to the lookout.

Ranger Arnie Arneson packed the materials to build the lookout up to the site about six or seven miles on mules. The cab lumber was cut in short pieces and bundled into packs that weighed about 250 pounds each. The timbers for the tower were each carried by two mules working in tandem with special pack saddles that allowed the load to pivot around the twists and turns in the trail.

The panoramic photos were taken in 1934, the year before the lookout was built or maybe the ground lookout was built sometime before 1935. There are the normal three photos covering 360 degrees plus a fourth "Supplemental" photo taken a mile southwest of the lookout. You can see that the supplemental sees into the area blocked by trees in the southwest view in the set of three.

Looking North, Spiral Butte just left of center.

Looking southeast at Clear Lake and Rimrock Lake (Tieton Reservoir)

Looking southwest with trees blocking the view. You can see the crank telephone line in the lower right corner.

The Supplemental photo looking southwest. The South Fork of the Tieton River and the Goat Rocks on the left.

Google Earth. Copy and paste these coordinates for Round Mountain in the search box in Google Earth if you want to take a look around. 46.634167, -121.330833

 

[Aerosled]

I forgot to post my contour map of Round Mountain. Here it is.

 

[Aerosled]

Bear Creek Mountain lookout was built in the early 1930s on the Tieton Ranger District in what is now the Goat Rocks Wilderness. My Grandpa took me deer hunting up there in about 1960. We drove his 1956 Ford pickup to Section Three Lake at the west end of Pine Grass Ridge on a very rough dirt road then walked in on the trail. We got close enough to the lookout to see it, but didn't see any deer.

Materials to build the Lookout were divided into 250 pound bundles and packed in on mules. Here they are waiting to be assembled in 1934.

The Lookout in 1940

1955 Photo

Section Three Lake. In the 70s two campers saw a Bigfoot type monster stalking their tent here. The Sheriff and forest patrol were notified but they were unable to locate the beast.

The beginning of the trail to the lookout.

Bear Creek Mountain on the left.

Small Pot Hole lakes in the meadow below the Lookout.

Or are they giant Sasquatch Tracks?

 

[Aerosled]

Quartz Mountain Lookout was built on the northwest end of Manastash Ridge on the boundary between the Naches and Cle Elum Ranger Districts. In 1933 a 40 foot steel tower was built then replaced with a 40 foot wood pole tower in 1938. Supposedly it was destroyed in 1967 but I can remember flying by the tower during a lightning storm in 1972. ???

Photo of the wood tower Lookout and Fire Guard Station in 1958.

Panoramic Photos were taken in 1934.

Looking southeast down Manastash Ridge and the guard Station

Looking southwest. Mount Rainier in the distance.

Looking north. The Stuart range in the distance.

The road to Quartz Mountain follows the South Fork of Manastash Creek. A couple miles before the top is the trail to Tanum Lake. It is a nice side trip with about a one mile hike to the lake.

The beginning of the trail

Tanum lake

View from across the lake.

Evidence of Beavers.

More hungry Beavers

Looking northwest at Peaches Ridge from the top Of Quartz Mountain.

A hunters camp and the Stuart Range in the background

Mount Rainier to the west

Smoke Column from the Evans canyon Fire Sept 1, 2020. The dead trees are from the Manastash Ridge fire in 2013.

I flew by to take this photo of the Manastash Ridge fire Its the black Spot.

Fueling up at 0h dark Thirty for the flight.

Lodgepole Pine reprod in the Manastash Ridge fire 2016.

Another way to get to Quartz Mountain is to walk the old Jeep Road along the top of Manastash Ridge.
It starts here at this old Porcilin sign near the top of the ridge.

It is hard to find the old road now days. In 1972 I was working on a helitack Crew at the Naches Ranger Station. A guy who had been driving the old jeep road with his father inlaw in an old 4 wheel drive International came in to the ranger Station. They had started at Quartz Mountain and had run out of gas about half way to bald Mountain. He left his father inlaw with the corn binder and had walked out to Bald mountain and hitched a ride to the Ranger Station. We flew 5 gallons of gas up to the father in law in a hughes 500.

In 1968 I found this sign laying on the ground in two pieces beside the tree with porcilin sign. In 1969 I was back up ther and the old wood sign was still laying there. I recognised it as something unique. Old wood signs that were brought in to the Ranger Station usually ended up in the burn pile so I took it home for safe keeping. In 2022 I tracked down the archeologist for the forest service and returned it to her. It is now back at the Naches Ranger Station.

Rock saddle pass 2014

 

[Aerosled]

Edgar Rock lookout was built on the Naches Ranger District in the 1930's over looking the Cliff Dell Summer Homes on the Chinook Pass Highway. Not named for the cliffs in the area but for residents Cliff and Della Schott. The lookout was destroyed in the 1950's. It is fairly low elevation without the broad views of higher elevation lookouts. It was built as a "Quick access site", close to the ranger station, a lookout could get there fairly quicky during a thunder storm or for weekend occupancy during busy recreation times when campers are out and about.

When I was a kid we would spend every weekend during the summer at my Great Grandma's cabin. On the way through Cliff Dell we could see the lookout and would watch to see if the Flag was up, indicating that the lookout was there.

Edgar Rock, named after Army Scout John Edgar who traveled a route on the south side of the river below the rock to warn a detachment of soldiers heading from Fort Steilacoom east over Naches Pass. In 1853 Edgar had encountered a group of Natives intending to ambush the soldiers near the now settlement of Cliff Dell. He was killed in the Yakima Indian Wars three years later

The trail to Edgar Rock, Forest Service Trail #964, starts near Fontain Flat on the Old river road off Highway 410. It's steep but not to far to the top.

Haystack Rock will be your beacon.

Little Bald Mountain from the trail.

Are the rocks holding the tree up or is the tree holding the rocks up?

Barbara at the top.

All that's left is some old anchor bolts

Looking down at Whistlin Jack's Lodge. Its the white roof next to the highway.

The same view from a 1954 Forest Service aerial photo. You can see a bridge across the river just down stream of Whistlin Jack's. The remains of it can still be found along the south side of the river.

Looking north up the Naches River.

The same view from the 1934 Edgar Rock Lookout panoramic photos.

Looking down river at the Jefferson Ranch. My Grandpa called it the Anderson Ranch, after the first homesteader.

The Anderson Ranch on the 1934 panoramic photos.

The Anderson Ranch on the 1954 Forest Service aerial photo

Looking down at Fontain Flats. The original Fontain Ranch house is still there.

Edgar Rock from Fontain Flats

 

[norsepeak]

That there once was a Forest Service Pole Lookout Platform on Devil's Table. Its between the main Rattlesnake and Little Rattlesnake up off Chinook Pass highway. Note the Sign says Rainier National Forest. Established in 1907 it was divided between the Columbia National Forest and the Snoqualmie National Forest in 1933. These were placed in areas where rangers could hike to to get a better view of areas the regular Lookouts couldn't see. Meeks table in the background.

Looking at the west edge of Devil's table from Cow Puncher Ridge. The platform would have been at the far end.

Meeks table in the upper right hand quadrant.

The snow capped peaks are Nelsons Ridge

Today you can drive to the spot where the Platform was

Copy and paste these coordinates into the search box on Google Earth or Google Maps to see the exact spot. 46 46 29.32, -121 02 48.29

Thank you for posting this info....can you contact me directly or give me more info on the hand drawn pics...Earl Brown was my Great Uncle.

 

[norsepeak]

Excellent post!!! Such great history of the area. I have been to and recognize almost all of the places in the pictures. The old Edgar Rock Lodge was on my property, just below Edgar Rock. The Lodge was sold and taken down to be reassembled back around 2010. It was in need of a lot of repair work and was taking up most of my yard. It was a bit of rare structure because it was built with rough cut vertical logs on site.

 

[Aerosled]

Thank you for posting this info....can you contact me directly or give me more info on the hand drawn pics...Earl Brown was my Great Uncle.

The hand drawn pictures of Lookouts by Earl Brown are hanging on the wall in the front office at the Naches Ranger Station. I went there and took photos of all all of them. The folks there are very helpful.

I worked with Earl on several Spruce bud worm spray projects and Fires in the 1980s. I clipped this news article out of the paper for my scrap book when he retired in 1992.