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Fire lookout · San Benito County, California

Call Mountain Lookout

1935 L-601 tower with BC-301 cab in San Benito County; a 2006 caption calls it abandoned; land control and access sources conflict; no fire history found.

Closed

The site is closed to visitors. Register: not readily accessible, about 5 miles from paved road, behind locked gates. Forest Fire Lookout Association table: operator Cal Fire, status 'Private Property, no access'. Land ownership is unsettled: the status suggests private land, while both sources name Cal Fire.

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Closed. See the warning at the top of this page.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Not staffed (as of 2006)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Enclosed towerL-601 tower with BC-301 cab, a 30-foot Dutch Windmill style lookoutThe design: BC-301
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
3,888 ft (1,185 m)
Agency
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection San Benito-Monterey Unit (Cal Fire BEU)
Land
Unknown
Location
San Benito County, California
Coordinates
36.61915, −121.06873
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ca-call-mountain

View from the cab

What you see from the 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.

Downloads about 3.5 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 Built30-foot L-601 tower with BC-301 cab, constructed 1935; Register notes the CCCs built many towers of this type in the 1930sSource: nhlr.org
  2. No record between 1935 and 1958
  3. 1958 Altered60 sq. ft. wood-frame generator building built next to the towerSource: nhlr.org
  4. 1967 Altered10,000-gallon concrete water storage tank constructed near the lookoutSource: nhlr.org
  5. No record between 1967 and 1991
  6. 1991 Condition assessmentRegister text carries a 10/91 credit line (MVT 10/91) covering its description and access noteSource: nhlr.org
  7. No record between 1991 and 2006
  8. 2006 AbandonedPhoto caption (photos taken April 16, 2006) says the lookout is now abandoned; it was formerly a CDF staffed lookoutSource: peakbagging.com
  9. 2019 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterDate registered October 26, 2019 as NHLR US 1341, CA 164Source: nhlr.org
  10. TodayStandingIt still stands, as far as our sources know.

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 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Call Mountain Lookout is a 30-foot tower with a cab on top, on a ridge in the Call Mountains of San Benito County.1 The Register files it under the "Dutch Windmill" type: an L-601 tower with a BC-301 cab, put up in 1935.1 It credits the Civilian Conservation Corps with building many towers of this kind in the 1930s, but does not name a crew for this one.1

A July 1953 photograph by Mace Pewtherer, from the Division of Forestry collection now housed at the Cal Fire Museum, shows the tower's exterior.2

Later alterations include aluminum sheeting, a steel fire-escape ladder, catwalk bracing and a composition roof.1 Metal bands were fitted along one leg to stop further cracking.1 In 1958 a small wood-frame generator building went up beside it, and a 10,000-gallon concrete water tank built in 1967 sits nearby.1

A 2006 photo caption calls it a former CDF-staffed lookout that is now abandoned.3 I found no date for when staffing ended.

The Register accepted the tower in October 2019 as NHLR US 1341.1 The entry adds that restoration would improve its original build quality.1

According to the Register, the public cannot easily get there: the site is roughly five miles from pavement and sits behind locked gates.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's California-South table gives its status as "Private Property, no access," and names Cal Fire as the operator.4 The Register also names the Cal Fire San Benito-Monterey Unit as the administering agency. The "Private Property" label suggests the land may be privately owned, and I could not settle who controls it.1,4 Cal Fire says it does not rent its lookouts.5 Please do not try to reach or climb the tower.

  1. Call Mountain Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ca/call-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. Call Mountain Lookout, July 1953, Mace Pewtherer, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/casbcfm_001111 (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. Call Mountain Lookout, California, Peakbagging (peakbagging.com), http://www.peakbagging.com/CALookoutPhotos/CallMtn.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  4. Listing of Fire Lookout Towers in Southern California Chapter, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookouthost.org), https://www.firelookouthost.org/southern-california (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  5. CAL FIRE Lookouts, CAL FIRE fact sheet, https://34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/calfire-website/about/communications/fact-sheets/fire-and-emergency-response/misc/lookouts.pdf?rev=62bbab0cc04d476196aa38cb39be6249&hash=B3DDEA1F83484A120E777AF13FC501EE (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

Call Mountain Lookout - 2006
Call Mountain Lookout - 2006 (2006)Photo: www.peakbagging.com, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Call Mountain Lookout
Photo: www.peakbagging.com, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, register numbers, agency, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.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. FFLA chapters, affiliates and Friends groups: lookout pages Gave us: register numbers, links FFLA chapters and Friends groups (each link names the group) · Links to the groups' own pages; facts only from the California-South chapter's tower table (register page, operator, condition). No text or photos reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, staffing, 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.