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Fire lookout · Jefferson County, Washington

Owl Mountain Lookout Site

Also known as AWS Owl Mountain

Two-story modified cupola cabin dated 1941 and listed as gone; a 1944 Air Warning Service report says a 1942 station used state facilities on the site.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The cabin is listed as gone. No source I found describes what remains on the site.

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
Two-story building2-story modified cupola cabinThe design: Cupola house
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1941
Height
Unknown
Elevation
3,398 ft (1,036 m)
Agency
Washington Division of Forestry/DNR
Land
Unknown
Location
Jefferson County, Washington
Coordinates
47.76497, −123.96472
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-wa-owl-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 4.4 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. 1941 Built2-story modified cupola cabin, per the register and firelookout.comSources: firetower.org, firelookout.com
  2. 1942 EventAir Warning Service station Baker 6-6 activated August 22, 1942, using existing state-owned facilities; a shake cabin was addedSource: washingtonlookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1942 and 2012
  4. 2012 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterDate registered per FFLOS detail page: January 19, 2012Source: FFLOS register entry
  5. 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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Owl Mountain, in Jefferson County about 20 miles north of Lake Quinault, held a two-story modified cupola cabin.1,2 The register lists it as administered by the Washington Division of Forestry/DNR, and Kemnow's index places it under the Washington Department of Natural Resources.1,3 The register and firelookout.com both date the cabin to 1941.1,2

The date is complicated by a 1944 report. Kemnow's page quotes that May 1944 report on Air Warning Service stations. It says a station called "Baker 6-6" was activated on August 22, 1942, used existing state-owned facilities, and added a shake cabin built of native material.3 Willhite's list also gives 1941 for Owl Mountain, while noting that the author drops sites that were used only as Aircraft Warning Stations in WWII.4 The sources do not say whether the 1941 cabin and the 1942 station were the same structure, so the timeline is unsettled.1,3

Every source I read says the cabin is now gone.1,2,5 When the Air Warning Service finished with the site, the state kept it.3

The only description of the setting I found is from the 1944 report, which put the station 14 miles from a road.3 No source describes what, if anything, remains on the site now, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Owl Mountain Lookout Site (US 1199), Former Fire Lookout Sites Register, firetower.org, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/wa/owl-mountain-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Owl Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/wa/owlmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Owl Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), washingtonlookouts.weebly.com, https://washingtonlookouts.weebly.com/owl-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Olympic Peninsula & Willapa Hills Lookout Sites, WillhiteWeb.com, https://willhiteweb.com/washington/fire_lookouts/olympics/list_460.htm (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  5. Washington lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/wa/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, register numbers, agency, dates, 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, 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.