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Fire lookout · Douglas County, Oregon

Anderson Camp

Douglas County, OR lookout on Anderson Mountain, Umpqua NF; built 1933-34 as an L-5 cab, abandoned in the 1950s, later burned. In 2018 only footings and some wooden legs remained.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower was later destroyed by burning; a 2018 visit found only the footings and some wooden support legs.

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. Reached on foot over Forest Service trails; the 2018 hike report describes no closure or permit requirement.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Park at the Forest Road 6515 trailhead, take the Anderson Camp Trail (USFS 1075) to the Rogue-Umpqua Divide, then go south on the Divide Trail (USFS 1470). The first trail gets limited maintenance and the trees now block the view.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-5 lookout cabThe design: L-5
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Umpqua National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Douglas County, Oregon
Coordinates
42.97805, −122.47775
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-anderson-camp

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 3.5 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. 1933 Built2018 hike report gives 1933 as the year the 30-foot pole live-in tower was builtSource: vanmarmot.org
  2. 1933 EventRoseburg newspaper notice said a 10x10 lookout was to be built before the snow flewSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1934 BuiltL-5 lookout cab built atop a 30-foot round timber tower by the Civilian Conservation Corps (Forest Lookouts); firelookout.com also gives 1934 but a 10-foot pole towerSources: oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  4. 1935 EventFour-strand barbed wire fence enclosing 20 acres built at a cost of $30.29Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1940 StaffedLouis Gable stationed at Anderson Camp during the summer months, per a News-Review noticeSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  6. No record between 1940 and 1958
  7. 1958 Abandoned2018 report and firelookout.com give 1958; Forest Lookouts says abandoned about mid-decadeSources: vanmarmot.org, firelookout.com
  8. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The Anderson Camp lookout stood on Anderson Mountain in the Umpqua National Forest, in Douglas County, Oregon.1,2,3 The name is older than the tower.2 Anderson Camp is also a meadow camp, which a 2018 hiker says commemorates Frank Anderson, an early sheepherder.2

A Roseburg newspaper notice from September 1933 said a 10-by-10 lookout was to be built before the snow flew.1 The Forest Lookouts page says the Civilian Conservation Corps built an L-5 cab on a 30-foot round timber tower in 1934.1 The 2018 hiking report gives 1933 as the build year and calls it a 30-foot pole tower with a live-in cab.2 We could not tell whether the 1933 plan and the 1934 cab were the same building.

A 1940 notice quoted on the Forest Lookouts page says Louis Gable had been stationed at Anderson Camp during the summer months.1 A fence enclosing 20 acres went up in 1935, at a cost of $30.29.1

Sources disagree on when the lookout was given up. The Forest Lookouts page says it was abandoned about the middle of the 1950s, while the 2018 report and firelookout.com both give 1958.1,2,3 The 2018 report says the tower was later destroyed by burning, but it gives no date.2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Oregon list marks the tower as gone.4 When the 2018 hiker visited, only the tower's footings and some of its wooden support legs were left, and trees had grown up and blocked the view.2

The site is reached on foot.2 The hiker parked at the Forest Road 6515 trailhead, followed the Anderson Camp Trail, which the Forest Service says gets limited maintenance, and then went south along the Rogue-Umpqua Divide Trail to the old lookout site.2 The 2018 report describes no closure or permit requirement.2

  1. Anderson Camp, Forest Lookouts (oregonlookouts.weebly.com), https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/anderson-camp.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Rogue-Umpqua Divide: Hiking to Anderson Camp, VanMarmot's Travels, https://vanmarmot.org/2018/06/01/anderson-camp-rogue-umpqua-divide-wilderness-01-jun-2018/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Anderson Camp Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/or/andersoncamp.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Oregon lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/or/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists 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
  2. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: links firelookout.com · No licence stated on the site; facts only (coordinates, elevation, built/destroyed years, design, agency). Photos mirrored with the site's stated credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: design, height, 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
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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.