FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Douglas County, Oregon

Taft Mountain

Umpqua NF tower built 1933 and staffed in 1937; sources disagree on its height and form; now gone, and no source describes what remains at the site.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone. Firelookout.com lists it as abandoned under its 1933 entry, with no other date; neither source gives a removal date.

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 tower20-foot round timber tower with an L-4 cab (Oregon Forest Lookouts); firelookout.com describes a 30-foot pole tower with a 12x12 ft cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Umpqua National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Douglas County, Oregon
Coordinates
43.23459, −122.79641
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-taft-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 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. 1932 EventProposed in July 1932 as one of nine new lookouts, estimated at $5,300 for the nineSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1933 Built20-foot round timber tower with an L-4 cab (Oregon Forest Lookouts); 30-foot pole tower with a 12x12 ft cab (firelookout.com)Sources: oregonlookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  3. 1933 EventPanorama photographs taken in August 1933Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1934 EventNew panorama photographs taken in March 1934Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1936 AlteredWoodshed constructed at a cost of $28.00; another $13.20 spent in 1937Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1937 StaffedA man spent the previous two weeks at the lookout before returning to school (September 1937 report)Source: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  7. 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.

Taft Mountain is a former lookout site in the Umpqua National Forest, in Douglas County.1,2 In July 1932 a Roseburg newspaper reported plans for nine new lookout houses, one of them at Taft Mountain, near an old cabin on the Little River-North Umpqua divide.1

The lookout went up in 1933.1,3 The Oregon Forest Lookouts page describes a 20-foot round timber tower with an L-4 cab.1 Firelookout.com describes a 30-foot pole tower with a 12-by-12-foot cab.3 Both sources give 1933, but they disagree on the height and the form of the tower.1,3 The 20-foot figure in our record matches only the first account.

Panorama photographs were taken in August 1933 and again in March 1934, and a woodshed was built in 1936.1 In September 1937 a Roseburg paper noted that a man had spent the previous two weeks at the lookout and then returned to school.1

Firelookout.com lists the tower as abandoned under its 1933 entry, with no other date.3 The Oregon page and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Oregon index both mark it as gone, though neither gives a removal date.1,2

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Taft Mountain, Oregon Forest Lookouts, https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/taft-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Oregon Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/or/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Taft Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://www.firelookout.com/or/taftmtn.html (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.