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Fire lookout · Lane County, Oregon

Bear Bones Mountain Lookout Site

Lane County, OR ground cabin on Bearbones Mountain, dated 1933 or 1934 (style disputed), briefly staffed in 1935 and gone by 1964; no current site report found.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone by 1964 per the register and firelookout.com; no source describes what remains on the summit

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
Trail
A 1953 survey description gives directions ending at a trail up the mountain; no current access report found

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabGround cabin; sources disagree (L-5, L-6, or a plan FC-2 10 x 10 ground house)The designs: L-5, L-6
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1933
Height
Unknown
Elevation
4,910 ft (1,497 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service
Land
Federal land
Location
Lane County, Oregon
Coordinates
43.54390, −122.51446
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-bear-bones-mountain

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 3.6 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 BuiltForest Lookouts: a plan FC-2 10 x 10 lookout ground house constructed in 1933. Conflicts with the 1934 date in the register and firelookout.com.Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1933 EventPanorama photographs dated 26 August 1933, captioned as the Bear Bones Mountain lookout (register); taken by William Birchall (Forest Lookouts)Sources: firetower.org, oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1934 BuiltRegister: built in 1934 as an L-5 ground cabin. firelookout.com: 1934 L-6 cab.Sources: firetower.org, firelookout.com
  4. 1935 StaffedC. A. Paddock sent to the lookout as emergency lookout fireman (Eugene Register-Guard item, quoted by Forest Lookouts)Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1935 and 1953
  6. 1953 EventCoast and Geodetic Survey station described on the summit; the description refers to the lookout house and a disk stamped BEARBONES 1953Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  7. 1964 RemovedGone by 1964 (register); 'Gone 1964' (firelookout.com). Method of removal not stated.Sources: firetower.org, firelookout.com
  8. No record between 1964 and 2010
  9. 2010 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterDate registered per FFLOS detail page: November 18, 2010Source: FFLOS register entry
  10. 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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Bear Bones Mountain stands at 4,910 feet in Lane County, Oregon, within the Willamette National Forest.1 Firelookout.com places it 14 miles south of Oakridge.2

The sources disagree about when the lookout was built and what kind of building it was. The Former Fire Lookout Sites register says a ground L-5 cabin went up in 1934.1 Firelookout.com also gives 1934 but calls the building an L-6 cab.2 Forest Lookouts gives 1933 for a 10 x 10 ground house built to plan FC-2.3 A panorama photograph captioned as the Bear Bones Mountain lookout is dated 26 August 1933, which suggests a lookout was standing by then.1,3

In September 1935 the Eugene Register-Guard reported that C. A. Paddock had been sent to the Bearbone lookout station as an emergency lookout fireman.3

A 1953 Coast and Geodetic Survey description, reproduced on Forest Lookouts, places the station on the summit.3 It puts a standard disk in bedrock 24 feet east of the lookout house's southeast corner, which implies that the lookout house was still standing in 1953.3

Both the register and firelookout.com say the cab was gone by 1964.1,2

The 1953 description gives directions that end at a trail up the mountain, but that is a survey note from 1953, not a current access report.3 None of the sources we read describes what, if anything, remains on the summit today, or whether that survey disk is still there.

  1. Bear Bones Mountain Lookout Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org), http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/or/bear-bones-mountain-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Bearbones Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/or/bearbonesmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Bearbones Mountain, Forest Lookouts (oregonlookouts.weebly.com), https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/bearbones-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Bear Bones Mountain Lookout site 2007
Bear Bones Mountain Lookout site 2007 (2007)Photo: Ron Kemnow collection, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source
Bear Bones Mountain Lookout panoramic 8-26-1933
Bear Bones Mountain Lookout panoramic 8-26-1933 (1933)Photo: National Archives-Pacific Northwest Region, 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. 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
  4. 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
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, staffing, 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.