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Fire lookout · Lane County, Oregon

Divide (5 Fingers) Lookout Site

Also known as Divide Ridge (Five Rivers)

Siuslaw NF lookout 23 miles NE of Florence, Oregon: 41-foot R-6 tower built 1959, last staffed 1972; gone, removal undated; the hill has been logged.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone per the register and firelookout.com; Rex's page lists it as removed with no year; removal date not found in any source

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
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower41-foot treated timber tower with an R-6 cabThe design: R-6
Built of
Wood
Built
1959
Height
41 ft (12.5 m)
Elevation
1,875 ft (572 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service (Siuslaw National Forest)
Land
Federal land
Location
Lane County, Oregon
Coordinates
44.20150, −123.80953
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-divide-5-fingers

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 3.7 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. 1959 Built41-foot treated timber tower with R-6 cab constructed on the siteSources: firetower.org, oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  2. 1960 First staffedPersonal account describes the author starting work as a fire lookout on Divide in summer 1960; first staffing record found in these sourcesSource: ancilnance.com
  3. 1961 StaffedPersonal account: the author's second and last summer as a lookout on Divide ('For two summers'; 'By the summer of 1961'; the 1972 visit was 'eleven years after my last summer there')Source: ancilnance.com
  4. 1972 EventAuthor's return visit to the site (personal account: 'I had visited Divide in 1972'); one painted stump had survived the tower's destruction and the recent loggingSource: ancilnance.com
  5. 1972 Last staffedLast season the lookout was staffed (Rex's page)Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1973 EventLookout placed on emergency status (Rex's page; firelookout.com 'Emergency 1973')Sources: oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  7. No record between 1973 and 2019
  8. 2019 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered November 6, 2019Source: firetower.org
  9. 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.

Divide, which the register lists as Divide (5 Fingers), sits in the Siuslaw National Forest in Lane County, Oregon.1 Firelookout.com places it about 23 miles northeast of Florence.2 Rex's page calls it Divide Ridge (Five Rivers).3

A 41-foot treated timber tower with an R-6 cab went up on the site in 1959.1,3,2

A former lookout's personal website says the author worked the tower in the summers of 1960 and 1961.4 The same account says the author used a backpack water pump once on a small smoke in a recent slash burn about a mile from the tower.4

Rex's page lists 1972 as the last season the lookout was staffed, and it lists the lookout on emergency status in 1973.3 Firelookout.com also gives 1973 as the emergency year.2

None of our sources dates the tower's removal. The register says only that the lookout is gone.1 Firelookout.com marks it gone without a date.2 The personal account says the tower had been torn down years before the author's later visit.4

The same account describes a return visit in 1972. The hill had been logged, and one of the stumps the author had painted around the tower survived both the tower's destruction and the logging.4 No other source we read describes what remains on the site now.

We found nothing on current public access. The register places the site in the Siuslaw National Forest, so check with that forest before planning a trip.1

  1. Divide (5 Fingers) Lookout Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites Register, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/or/divide-5-fingers-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Divide (5 Fingers) Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/or/divide5fingers.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Divide Ridge, Forest Lookouts (Oregon), Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/divide-ridge.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Divide Lookout, Mapleton, Deadwood, Oregon USFS, a former lookout's personal website, https://www.ancilnance.com/divide/index.php (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Divide (5 Fingers) Lookout 1960
Divide (5 Fingers) Lookout 1960 (1960)Photo: Howard Verschoor collection, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source
Divide (5 Fingers) Lookout
Divide (5 Fingers) LookoutPhoto: Howard Verschoor collection, 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: design, height, 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, height, status, agency, 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.