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Fire lookout · Glenn County, California

Black Diamond Lookout Site

Glenn County lookout site: a BC-301 cabin on a 30-foot steel tower built in 1935; removal date unknown, and only the garage foundation and tower piers remain.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Only the garage foundation and tower piers remain, according to the register; removal date unknown.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerCalifornia Plan BC-301 cabin atop a 30-foot open steel K-brace tower, with a garage on siteThe design: BC-301
Built of
Steel
Built
1935
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
3,234 ft (986 m)
Agency
US Forest Service - Mendocino National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Glenn County, California
Coordinates
39.40982, −122.62104
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ca-black-diamond

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and its recorded height.

Downloads about 3.4 MB of terrain data the first time.

Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.

History

Then and now

  1. 1935 BuiltLookout built; the register lists the cabin as a BC-301 on a 30-foot steel tower.Source: firetower.org
  2. No record between 1935 and 2020
  3. 2020 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterDate registered per FFLOS detail page: January 22, 2020Source: FFLOS register entry
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

Old maps of this spot

USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Black Diamond is a former lookout site in Glenn County, on land of the Mendocino National Forest that the Forest Service administers.1 The register gives its elevation as 3,234 feet (986 meters).1

A lookout was built on the site in 1935. The cabin followed California Plan BC-301 and stood on an open steel tower about 30 feet tall, braced in a K pattern. The site also held a garage.1 A photo caption on the register page dates one picture of the lookout to 1968, and the picture came from the Upper Lake Ranger District collection.1

The register gives the removal date as unknown.1 According to the register, the garage foundation and the tower piers are all that is left.1 No source I found describes the site as it is now, so nothing is known here about its view, its road access or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Black Diamond Lookout Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/ca/black-diamond-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Black Diamond Lookout - 1968
Black Diamond Lookout - 1968 (1968)Photo: Upper Lake Ranger District Collection, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, register numbers, agency, ownership, dates, photos, links Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: type, status, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story

More about this lookout elsewhere

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.