FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Tulare County, California

Kern Peak Lookout Site

Inyo NF ground cabin on Kern Peak, Tulare County, dated about 1917; register says nothing remains, but a 2008 trip report describes collapsed tower remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Register says nothing remains; a 2008 trip report describes collapsed tower remains and one usable platform on the summit

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Inyo National Forest land; a 2008 trip report describes hikers reaching the summit

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
A 2008 trip report describes hikers reaching the summit.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabRegion 5 Plan 4A ground cabin (per register)The design: Plan 4-A
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1917
Height
Unknown
Elevation
11,515 ft (3,510 m)
Agency
US Forest Service - Inyo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Tulare County, California
Coordinates
36.30857, −118.28778
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ca-kern-peak

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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

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. 1917 BuiltRegister dates the ground cabin to circa 1917Source: firetower.org
  2. 1917 EventLightning struck the cabin nine times in a storm on October 1Source: californialookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1917 StaffedLester E. Creasey named as government lookout at Kern Peak stationSource: californialookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1917 and 2008
  5. 2008 EventTrip report describes collapsed lookout tower remains and one usable platform on the summitSource: snwburd.com
  6. 2020 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterDate registered per FFLOS detail page: April 26, 2020Source: FFLOS register entry
  7. 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.

Kern Peak rises to 11,515 feet in Tulare County, on the Inyo National Forest, and the register counts it among the state's highest-elevation fire-detection sites.1 Its lookout was a Region 5 Plan 4A ground cabin, dated on the register to about 1917.1

One named lookout appears in the sources: Lester E. Creasey, identified as the government lookout at Kern Peak station in a 1917 report reprinted in a newspaper.2 During a storm on October 1, 1917, lightning struck the cabin nine times. Creasey wrote that the cabin still looked fine, with black spots where it was hit, most of them on the flagpole.2

The register gives no removal date and says no trace of the lookout is left at the site.1 A 2008 trip report disagrees. It describes the summit as a largely collapsed lookout tower, with one platform still usable.3 A reader's email added to that report in 2017 suggests that an object the writer had thought might be an outhouse was more likely the remains of a stand for an Osborne Fire Finder inside the lookout.3

The peak lies on national forest land, and the 2008 hikers reached the summit.1,3 Because the register and the trip report disagree, no source settles what stands on the summit now.

  1. Kern Peak Lookout Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites Register, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/ca/kern-peak-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Kern Peak - Forest Lookouts, California Forest Lookouts, https://californialookouts.weebly.com/kern-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Kern Peak P2K trip report, snwburd.com, https://www.snwburd.com/bob/trip_reports/kern_1.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Kern Peak Lookout
Kern Peak LookoutPhoto: Mark Swift Collection, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source
April 7, 1918
April 7, 1918 (1918)Photo: Fresno Morning Republican, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source

Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.

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) 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, status, agency, access, visiting details, 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.