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Fire lookout · Skamania County, Washington

Switchback Mountain

Also known as Switchback

Skamania County, WA 20-foot wooden tower built in the 1930s and now gone; footings and phone-line insulators remain on an abandoned road a one-mile walk from Forest Road 8851.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone per firelookout.com and its index; Willhite does not know when it was destroyed; footings remain at the site

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Reached by a walk of about one mile on an abandoned road from Forest Road 8851; the sources describe no closure

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
No tower remains to climb. The old road ends at the top of a steep hillside above the Lewis River.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower20-foot wooden L-5 tower with a cab; Willhite reads it as a 20-foot pole tower with added stairs and numerous pole supportsThe design: L-5
Built of
Not recorded
Built
Unknown
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Gifford Pinchot National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Skamania County, Washington
Coordinates
46.16413, −121.83701
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-wa-switchback-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 4.2 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 EventPhotographs on Willhite's page are dated October 19, 1935; the build date is given only as sometime in the 1930sSource: willhiteweb.com
  2. 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.

Switchback Mountain Lookout stood at 3,537 feet in Skamania County, Washington, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, about 17 miles west-southwest of Mount Adams.1,2

The lookout was built sometime in the 1930s.2 Firelookout.com describes a 20-foot wooden L-5 tower.1 Based on images, Willhite says the cab appears to sit on a 20-foot pole tower, with stairs added and numerous pole supports.2 His notes also place the panoramic photos on the roof at 20 feet plus 15 feet for the cab, so the total height is unclear.2

Aerial images from the 1930s show the road already in place.2 Photographs on Willhite's page are dated October 19, 1935, and look north, southwest and southeast.2

Firelookout.com and its index list the tower as gone.1,3 Willhite says the date of its destruction is unknown.2

The old road is abandoned, and a berm at its start blocks vehicles.2 Forest Road 8851 is paved from the Mosquito Lake area to the Little Niagara Falls junction, with gravel and some potholes for the final few miles.2 The walk to the site is about one mile with a 250-foot climb, and the old road ends at the top of a steep slope down to the Lewis River.2

Willhite's 2019 visit found the old road easy to walk.2 He photographed three of seven footings, two more footings, and phone line insulators left on trees along the abandoned section.2 Willhite's photo captions say the views over the Lewis River valley are gone.2 The sources describe the walk on national forest land and mention no closure.1,2

  1. Switchback Mtn. Fire Lookout, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/wa/switchbackmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Switchback Lookout Site - Gifford Pinchot National Forest, WillhiteWeb.com, http://willhiteweb.com/washington_fire_lookouts/switchback_lookout/gifford_pinchot_257.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Washington Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/wa/ (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. WillhiteWeb.com: Washington Fire Lookouts Gave us: links WillhiteWeb.com · No licence stated; names and page links only (the site's photos and text are not reproduced). · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, visiting details, 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.