Fire lookout · Rio Arriba County, New Mexico
Cerro Valdez
Rio Arriba County, NM: ground lookout site listed as gone; its L-4 lookout and log cabin were moved to the Encino site in fall 1949.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The L-4 lookout and its log cabin were moved to the Encino site in fall 1949
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
- Type
- Ground-level cabL-4 lookout with a log cabin, ground siteThe design: L-4
- Built of
- WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Santa Fe National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Rio Arriba County, New Mexico
- Coordinates
- 36.10035, −106.57938
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-nm-cerro-valdez
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 3.2 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
- 1949 MovedL-4 lookout and its log cabin moved from Cerro Valdez to the Encino siteSource: firelookout.org
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Cerro Valdez was a ground lookout site in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, on the Santa Fe National Forest.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a ground site rather than a tower, and as gone.1
The site had an L-4 lookout and its own log cabin.3 In the fall of 1949, both were moved to the Encino site, according to a 2020 chapter report.3 That report discusses the moved structures as part of the Encino complex. The complex was evaluated for the 1988 thematic National Register nomination and found not eligible, because the L-4 and cabins had been moved from Cerro Valdez and the lookout was not yet 50 years old on site.3
In 2020, the same report says, Encino was the only lookout on the Coyote Ranger District and was staffed.3
No source we read describes what remains at the Cerro Valdez site today, or whether that site is open to visitors. We found no source on whether the Encino site is open to the public either.
- New Mexico Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/nm/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Cerro Valdez, Forest Lookouts, https://westlookouts.weebly.com/cerro-valdez.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- 2020 Year-End Report, New Mexico Chapter, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/cr-nm-2020.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- Forest Fire Lookout Association chapter reports (opens another site) Gave us: what it is built of, design, dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association, chapter and restoration-grant reports (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts only (dates, names, the kind of work done). Every note is our own wording and every event links to the FFLA report it comes from. Positions are copied from the NHLR, FFLOS and FFLA records. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) Gave us: agency, ownership, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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
- FFLA New Mexico lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Forest Fire Lookout Association chapter reports: work on Cerro Valdez (opens another site)
- Cerro Valdez on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.