Bald Knob Lookout

A room on a tower at the second gate

The lookout road on Bald Knob ends past a second gate. Beyond it stands a one-room cabin, 16 feet on a side, set on a timber tower with a catwalk around it. Inside are a single bed and a small table and chairs. The Forest Service page lists a propane stove, heater, refrigerator and lights. The Recreation.gov listing says that after vandalism to a propane tank and winter storm damage, none of these would be available “until the next 2026 season,” and it asks guests to bring their own light. There is no water on the knob. Visitors carry in what they need for drinking, cooking and washing, and they carry out their garbage and food. A vault toilet stands about 100 feet from the tower. Outside are a picnic table, a campfire ring and room for one small tent. The Forest Service warns that strong winds could blow a tent off the mountain unless it is weighted down inside.

The cabin sleeps four at most. Pets and smoking are not allowed, and the Forest Service calls the site unsafe for small children because of the height of the tower. Accounts of that height differ. The Forest Service gives a twenty-one-foot tower. Firelookout.com and the National Historic Lookout Register give 20 feet. The Forest Service puts the summit at 3,630 feet, and the Register gives 3,447. From the catwalk the view runs north over Eden Valley and south to the Rogue River, with forest beyond. The Forest Service describes a night sky full of stars and, at dawn, the sun rising over the Cascades.

The lookout belongs to the Powers Ranger District of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and is rented from Memorial Day through October. Firelookout.com places it 26 miles south-southeast of Myrtle Point, in Coos County. The drive starts in Powers and runs south on Highway 242 to the Forest boundary. It continues about 11.5 miles on Forest Road 33 beside the South Fork of the Coquille River, then climbs about 2 miles on Road 3348. At Road 5520 the pavement ends. A right turn onto spur 5520-020 leads about 2 miles to the first gate. Recreation.gov reports that Road 5520 has winter storm damage and is safely passable only in a high-clearance four-by-four. Road 3343 is closed to through traffic and does not reach the lookout.

Panther Ridge and the falls on the Coquille

The Panther Ridge Trail can be reached from the lookout. It follows a historic Native American travel corridor. About 95 percent of the trail lies within the Wild Rogue Wilderness, where motorized vehicles and equipment of any kind are barred. The path passes under stands of old-growth timber and through undergrowth of rhododendron and scrub oak. Nearby, the Coquille River Falls Trail switches back and forth through a virgin stand of Douglas-fir, hemlock and Port-Orford cedar and ends at the falls. Recreation.gov names spotted owls, bull elk, salamanders and sandhill cranes among the wildlife of the forest.

Twenty-five cents for nails

The Forest Service, Recreation.gov and Firelookout.com all date the lookout site to 1931. The National Historic Lookout Register says the original structure at Bald Knob was built in 1914, and the Siskiyou Bulletin of that year follows the work month by month. In May 1914 the Bulletin expected a Mr. Reynolds to visit “Bald Knob lookout for the purpose of sizing up the situation for lookout cabin and water supply” before he left Illahe for Grants Pass by way of Galice. The June issue set out Guard T. D. Land’s plan: move supplies to his lookout on Bald Knob, repair the telephone line to Illahe, erect a shelter, and install a map and sighting device. If no device could be found in the Supervisor’s office, one would be built “which will serve his purpose temporarily at least.”

The Historical Study of the Siskiyou National Forest, published in January 1939, records the result in one line: “A shake shelter was built on Bald Knob by the lookout at a cost of 25 cents for nails.” By July 1914 Ranger Helm reported that Land had completed a lookout building and blazed a trail to the Coquille River Trail. The building was ready for the fire finder as soon as someone had time to pack it up. In August the Bulletin counted 13 fires reported from Bald Knob, 12 outside the Forest and 1 inside.

Guard Noble Price was assigned to the lookout in the summer of 1915. In May 1916 he and his brother Frank were felling a small patch of timber that blocked the view from the knob and repairing their telephone lines. That year a trail from Squaw Creek to Bald Knob was completed. On July 26, 1917, the Gold Beach Reporter announced that Miss Martha Price of Illahe had been appointed fire lookout on Bald Knob and had taken charge of the station. The paper wrote that Curry County probably held the distinction of having the first woman lookout of the Forest Service in the state.

Lumber for a proper lookout building lay at Powers for a year. In September 1918 Ranger Helm hired a packer to take it up the mountain. That October, Helm and a Mr. Kirby sawed, chopped, split and hewed timbers on the knob and carried them on their backs, until snow drove them out in early November. On October 19, 1922, the lookout Bill Reeves was keeping a pet bear cub at the station. In August 1926 George Valentine was reporting fires from the knob by telephone. According to the Forest Service, crank telephones served the forest’s lookouts until the 1950s. Each winter snow brought down trees that broke the lines, which then had to be repaired. No effective Forest Service radio system linked the lookouts until after the Second World War.

From the L-4 to the R-6

In 1931 a gable-roofed L-4 lookout was built on Bald Knob, on what Firelookout.com describes as a 21-foot platform. In 1942 a small cabin was added for observers of the Aircraft Warning Service. The Forest Service dates that duty to 1942–44 and says it ended when radar became effective along the coast. The Register gives 1942–43.

On October 12, 1962, the Columbus Day gale badly damaged the lookout house. In 1963 the Forest Service removed the old lookout and built the present cabin that same year, an R-6 flat-top on a treated-timber tower. Everett and Sue Deniston were keeping it on September 29, 1972, when it was the only lookout station on the district. They shared its view of the Rogue and Coquille drainages. In 1992 the wood window frames were replaced with metal and the lookout was painted. In 2010 the Coos Forest Protective Association installed a smoke detection camera system there to extend its fire detection. On May 11, 2022, on the nomination of Brad Eells, Bald Knob Lookout entered the National Historic Lookout Register as US 1572 and OR 131.