FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Douglas County, Oregon

Tallow Butte

Umpqua NF lookout site first recorded in 1960; sources conflict on the later cab and on removal (1976 per one source); gone, with no description of the site found.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone. The Oregon Forest Lookouts page says it was removed in 1976; firelookout.com marks it gone on the same line as its 1970 Emergency note and gives no 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
Ground-level cab8x8 ft enclosed platform with a tent cabin (1960); an R-6 cab is given for 1964 by firelookout.com onlyThe design: R-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1960
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Umpqua National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Douglas County, Oregon
Coordinates
42.99951, −122.68410
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-tallow-butte

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. 1960 Built8x8 ft enclosed platform with a tent cabin (firelookout.com); an alidade set on a tin-roofed platform (Oregon Forest Lookouts)Sources: firelookout.com, oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1962 StaffedA second-year fire watcher at the site, per a 1962 News-Review item quoted on the Oregon pageSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1964 AlteredR-6 cab added according to firelookout.com; the Oregon page does not give this dateSource: firelookout.com
  4. 1965 EventOregon Forest Lookouts says a lookout house was constructed; conflicts with the 1964 R-6 dateSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1970 EventFirelookout.com notes an 'Emergency' entry for 1970 without explanationSource: firelookout.com
  6. 1976 RemovedRemoved, according to the Oregon Forest Lookouts page; firelookout.com gives no dateSource: oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  7. 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.

Tallow Butte is a former lookout site in the Umpqua National Forest, in Douglas County.1,2

The earliest structure in the sources dates from 1960.3,1 Firelookout.com describes an 8-by-8-foot enclosed platform with a tent cabin.3 The Oregon page records an alidade, a sighting instrument for taking bearings, mounted on a tin-roofed platform in the same year.1 The two accounts differ on what the structure was, though both put a lookout on the site in 1960.3,1

A 1962 newspaper item quoted on the Oregon page describes a second-year fire watcher at the site.1

The accounts diverge after that. Firelookout.com says an R-6 cab was added in 1964, and it notes an "Emergency" entry for 1970 without explaining it.3 The Oregon page says a lookout house was built in 1965.1 We could not reconcile the 1964 and 1965 dates.

The Oregon page says the site was removed in 1976.1 Firelookout.com marks it gone on the same line as the 1970 "Emergency" note, and gives no removal date.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Oregon index lists Tallow Butte as a ground site that is gone.2

We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains on the site today.

  1. Tallow Butte, Oregon Forest Lookouts, https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/tallow-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Oregon Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/or/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Tallow Butte Fire Lookout Cabin, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://www.firelookout.com/or/tallowbutte.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: 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, 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.