FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Josephine County, Oregon

Serpentine

Also known as Serpentine - 2

Josephine County twin summits: 1935 pole tower on the north summit, 1962 R-6 timber tower on the south; listed as ruins, removed, and gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. One listing calls the site ruins, another marks the tower removed, and the county directory lists the tower as gone.

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 R-6 flat-roof cab (1962)The design: R-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
41 ft (12.5 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Siskiyou National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Josephine County, Oregon
Coordinates
42.35097, −123.65936
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-serpentine

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 3.6 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. 1935 Built40-foot pole tower of the L-4 type on the north summit.Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1962
  3. 1962 Replaced by a new structure41-foot treated timber tower with R-6 flat-roof cab on the south summit; replaced an older tower about one mile north.Sources: firelookout.com, oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  4. 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 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Serpentine is a lookout site on the Siskiyou National Forest, about 17 miles west-southwest of Grants Pass in Josephine County, Oregon. The two summits there stand at 4,282 and 4,492 feet.1

A 40-foot pole tower of the L-4 type went up on the north summit in 1935.1 In 1962 a 41-foot treated timber tower with an R-6 flat-roof cab was built on the south summit.1,2 The Oregon Lookouts page says that tower took the place of an older one roughly a mile north, but does not say whether that was the 1935 tower.2

The tower's fate is recorded in three different ways. One listing calls the site ruins.1 A status line on the Oregon Lookouts page reads "Removed."2 The county directory marks the tower as gone.3

No source describes the site now beyond those undated notes. Anyone thinking of visiting should check with the Siskiyou National Forest first.1

  1. Serpentine Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/or/serpentine.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Serpentine - 2, Oregon Lookouts, https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/serpentine---2.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Oregon Lookouts (by County), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/or/or-co/ (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, 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.