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Fire lookout · Coos County, Oregon

McKeever Mountain

Coos County lookout house built with Weyerhaeuser help in 1948-1953 and abandoned in 1962; the FFLA list says gone and no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone by the Forest Fire Lookout Association; no source we read describes what remains

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
Ground-level cabLookout house with a cupola (1953 entry); firelookout.com calls it a cabinThe design: Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1953
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coos County FPA (Coos Forest Protective Association); firelookout.com lists Weyerhaeuser Corp.
Land
Unknown
Location
Coos County, Oregon
Coordinates
43.39731, −124.01207
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-mckeever-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 3.8 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. 1948 EventNamed for Don McKeever, a Weyerhaeuser research forester killed in a snag accident a few months earlier (Forest Log, August 1948)Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1948 First staffedA 1948 Oregon Department of Forestry report, as quoted on the Forest Lookouts page, says a lookout patrol was established on the butteSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1953 BuiltLookout house with a cupola constructed by the Weyerhaeuser Company, per the Forest Lookouts page; firelookout.com dates a cabin to 1953Sources: oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  4. 1962 AbandonedBoth pages say the lookout was abandoned in 1962Sources: oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  5. 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.

McKeever Mountain lies about 11 miles east of Coos Bay, in Coos County, Oregon.1 Firelookout.com gives its elevation as 1,698 feet.1

The lookout grew out of a 1948 arrangement between the Weyerhaeuser company and the Coos Forest Protective Association. A June 1948 Coos Bay Times item, quoted on a Forest Lookouts page, said the company was supplying two new lookout sites, one of them on McKeever Butte.2 In August, the Forest Log reported that the new lookout was named for Don McKeever, a Weyerhaeuser research forester who had died a few months earlier when a dead tree came down on the car he was riding in.2

Accounts differ on how the lookout was built. A 1948 Oregon Department of Forestry annual report, also quoted on that page, says Weyerhaeuser supplied a building and relocated it to the site, and that a lookout patrol was set up there.2 A 1949 newspaper item expected the company to build a tower, with the protection association supplying the staff.2 A 1953 entry describes a cupola-topped lookout house that the company built.2,1

The lookout was abandoned in 1962.2,1 Firelookout.com names "Weyerhauser Corp." on its page, while the Forest Lookouts page files the site under the Coos County FPA.1,2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists McKeever Mountain as gone.3

No source we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.2,1,3 A 2026 directory of Oregon's standing lookouts does not include it.4

  1. McKeever Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/or/mckeevermtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. McKeever Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Oregon), https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/mckeever-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Oregon Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/or/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Oregon's Standing Lookouts, cherylhill.net, https://cherylhill.net/firelookouts/oregons-standing-lookouts/ (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: 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, status, agency, staffing, 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.