A listing of Forest Fire Lookouts in California is provided in two tables. The lists contain both current active lookouts and those abandoned or dismantled. The list does not include temporary sites or those planned but never built. Lookout sites were found by examining Forest Service maps and 1:24,000 and 1:100,000 scale topographic maps. My intial list was compared to one compiled by Mark Thornton in the 1980's. I found many additional sites from this list. I also wish to thank Fred Johnson of Berkeley, California for providing the Thornton list and other information.

There may be errors or omissions in this list and any corrections provided will be appreciated and acknowledged. I have visited many lookouts, but certainly will never get to all of the 495 sites!

Forest Fire Lookouts in California, List #1 with Location and Township data.

Forest Fire Lookouts in California, List #2 with Location and Benchmark data.

Note: Other states may be added later.

Reference: 1. "Fixed Point Fire Detection", Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Nov. 1986, by Mark V. Thornton.

Join the Forest Fire Lookout Association. http://www.firelookout.org

Information about Buck Rock Lookout, Sequoia National Forest.

Acknowledgment: I received a note from Karen Isaacson Leverich about a possible Lookout on Mount Pinos which is in the Los Padres Forest in Ventura County. There is no evidence that a traditional Lookout building was every constructed there, but there was a "plane spotting building" on the summit during the war years. One of the older topo maps refers to this as a Lookout. It may have been used for fire spotting as well. Fred Johnson reports that he visited Mount Pinos in May 1943 and the building was there. This is similar to Caliente Mountain which also had a plane spotting building during the war. Some of this building still remains in bad condition. Since I have listed Caliente I have decided to add Mount Pinos to the list.

Revision List:

1. Kaiser Peak, Fresno County; Mt. Raymond, Madera County; and Pilot Peak, Mariposa County were deleted after it was found that these were temporary sites with no structure ever built.

2. The elevation of Delilah Lookout was corrected and the benchmark listing was removed since Delilah BM is back on the ridge some distance away.

3. Topatopa Lookout changed to a site since the structure burned in the 2006 Day Fire. Thorn Point changed to a condition B from a site since there is a dilapidated structure there. Info on these lookouts provided by Scott Holder.