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Fire lookout · Umatilla County, Oregon

Lucky Strike Lookout Site

Umatilla County, OR site: 67-ft wooden L-4 tower built 1936, torn down 1956-57; its ground cabin was moved to Tower Mountain, where it is living quarters.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower torn down by 1956 (annual report) or removed in 1957 (register); the ground cabin was moved to Tower Mountain

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
About 12 miles northeast of Ukiah in the Umatilla National Forest; no source we read describes road or trail access to the site today

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower67-foot wooden L-4 tower with a ground cabinThe design: L-4
Built of
Wood
Built
1936
Height
67 ft (20.4 m)
Elevation
5,129 ft (1,563 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service, Umatilla National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Umatilla County, Oregon
Coordinates
45.27665, −118.80767
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-lucky-strike

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. 1936 Built67-foot wooden L-4 tower and ground cabin built, per the register and firelookout.com; a register panorama photo is captioned 7-25-1935 (see resolved_conflicts)Sources: firetower.org, firelookout.com
  2. 1936 StaffedMr. and Mrs. Clarence Huston listed as lookout personnelSource: firelookout.com
  3. 1937 StaffedKeith Hutchinson listed as lookout personnelSource: firelookout.com
  4. 1951 MovedBy January 1951 the Lucky Strike house was set on a concrete foundation at Tower Mtn.; a garage from the site was moved to the district guard residence (Ukiah Ranger District annual report, quoted by Forest Lookouts)Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1956 RemovedJanuary 27, 1956 annual report entry: lookout eliminated from the detection system and the tower torn down; the register and firelookout.com give 1957Sources: oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firetower.org, firelookout.com
  6. No record between 1956 and 2011
  7. 2011 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterDate registered per FFLOS detail page: August 20, 2011Source: FFLOS register entry
  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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The Lucky Strike Lookout stood about 12 miles northeast of Ukiah, in the Umatilla National Forest, Umatilla County, Oregon.1 The register describes a 67-foot wooden L-4 tower with a ground cabin, built in 1936.2 A panorama photo in the same register is captioned July 25, 1935, a year before that build date, so the build year is not settled.2

Firelookout.com names Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Huston as lookout personnel in 1936, and Keith Hutchinson in 1937.1

The cabin left the site before the tower did.3 A Ukiah Ranger District annual report, quoted by Forest Lookouts, says that by January 1951 the Lucky Strike house had been set on a concrete base at Tower Mtn., and a garage from the site had been moved to the district guard residence.3 SummitPost says the ground cabin at Tower Mountain burned in the 1940s and was replaced by this one.4

A January 1956 entry in the same annual report says the lookout was dropped from the detection system and the tower was taken down.3 The register and firelookout.com date the tower's removal to 1957.2,1

The cabin now serves as the living quarters at Tower Mountain, where a separate tower erected in 1935 stands at 92 feet.5 Oregon Hikers says visitors need a lookout on site before they can go inside the cabin.5 No source we read describes the Lucky Strike site itself today.

  1. Lucky Strike Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/or/luckystrike.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Lucky Strike Lookout Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/or/lucky-strike-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Lucky Strike, Forest Lookouts, https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/lucky-strike.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Tower Mountain, SummitPost, https://www.summitpost.org/tower-mountain/747434 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  5. Tower Mountain Lookout, Oregon Hikers Field Guide, https://www.oregonhikers.org/field_guide/Tower_Mountain_Lookout (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Lucky Strike Lookout panoramic 7-25-1935
Lucky Strike Lookout panoramic 7-25-1935 (1935)Photo: National Archives-Pacific Northwest Region, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source
Lucky Strike Lookout panoramic 7-25-1935
Lucky Strike Lookout panoramic 7-25-1935 (1935)Photo: National Archives-Pacific Northwest Region, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source
Lucky Strike Lookout panoramic 7-25-1935
Lucky Strike Lookout panoramic 7-25-1935 (1935)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, 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.