Black Mountain Lookout

The cabin on Black Mountain is one room on a single-story tower, ten feet above the ground, at 7,161 feet on the eastern edge of the Plumas National Forest. Honey Lake lies to the north of its windows and Last Chance Creek to the south. Plumas Arts describes a view running across Nevada’s Basin and Range, with the active Thompson Peak Lookout to the north and Honey Lake “resting at the base of the Sierra Nevada escarpment below.” No one has kept fire watch here since the 1980s. The Forest Service now rents the lookout by the night, normally from Memorial Day weekend through October. The 2026 season is scheduled to close October 19.

One room, two beds, no water

The building is a C-3-type lookout, which the Forest Service calls extremely well-preserved. Inside are two single beds with mattresses, a table with four chairs, a stove and oven, a refrigerator, a heater, electric lights, some kitchenware, and a dry sink. There is no water on the mountain. Guests haul up what they need for drinking, cooking, and washing, along with sleeping bags, towels, dish soap, and garbage bags, and the Forest Service suggests bringing a spare light. Four people sleep in the cabin and four more may pitch tents beside the tower, for eight on the site. Outside stand one picnic table and a vault toilet. Pets are allowed and smoking is not. Guests are asked to keep the building and grounds clean to deter squirrels, mice, rats, and bears, to pack out all trash, and to lock the doors and windows on leaving.

Deer, coyotes, bald eagles, and osprey live in the country around the peak. The recreation listing names hiking, birding, wildlife viewing, and stargazing as what guests do there. Plumas Arts adds photographers waiting on sunrise and sunset, cyclists, and families. Frenchman Lake, used for swimming, water skiing, fishing, and camping, is within a 30-minute drive.

Up Milford Grade

Milford is a small settlement on Highway 395, about twenty-three miles south of Susanville by the Plumas Arts count. The lookout stands ten miles in from the highway. From Milford the Forest Service route climbs County Road 336, the gravel Milford Grade, past the Laughlin Work Center and Laughlin Campground, then turns onto Forest Road 26N80B for the last climb. From the Reno side the road goes up the Doyle Grade past Meadowview Campground. The final stretch on Road 26N80 is steep gravel, high-clearance vehicles are recommended, and early and late in the season the road is subject to weather.

Entry is by a key kept in a lock box. The Beckwourth Ranger District in Blairsden gives out the combination along with word of fire, road, or storm closures. No gate blocks the road, and the Forest Service tells renters: “be aware you will receive other visitors to the lookout.”

Rangers, then retirees

Sources differ on when the tower went up. The Forest Service, Recreation.gov, and the Living New Deal give 1934 and credit the Civilian Conservation Corps. Plumas Arts also credits the CCC but places construction in the late 1930s or early 1940s. By the Plumas Arts account, the lookout served for decades as home and office for rangers of the old Milford Ranger District, since renamed the Beckwourth Ranger District. Staffing ended in the 1980s, and Plumas Arts counts more than thirty years out of service before the restoration.

That work came between 2008 and 2010. Three Forest Service retirees, Mike Martini, Pete Meyer, and Curtis Marshall, gave their labor, and the Plumas County Resource Advisory Committee gave support. The tower got a new roof, a refurbished interior, an upgraded electrical system, and a new toilet building. Plumas Arts adds heat, the stove and refrigerator, and modern lightning grounding. In 2011 the lookout became a recreation rental, and the rental fees go to its upkeep.

By 2026 it needed attention again. The Forest Fire Lookout Association, a national nonprofit that helps local organizers keep lookouts standing, called for volunteers to repair and paint the building on four dates that summer: July 8, July 29, August 26, and September 30. Jon Aronson, the group’s Northern California representative, organized the effort. “The Black Mountain Lookout is used as a rental for the public to stay overnight,” Aronson said. “It’s a little run down right now and needs a few repairs and paint.”

Painters in the lookout

Each season a few nights at the lookout go to artists. The Artist in the Lookout residency is a partnership of Plumas Arts and the Plumas National Forest, and 2024 marked their eighth annual collaboration. Residents spend solo nights on the mountain: four in 2018, three by 2024 and 2026. In return they give an original framed work or a body of work, which Plumas Arts presents to the public each November. The 2024 call invited poetry and short prose as well as visual art. Barbara McCabe, the 2023 resident, photographed the night sky over the tower and titled the picture “Nebula.” The 2026 residents, Lorraine Nielsen and Liz Swindell, were scheduled to show their work in November at the Capitol Arts Gallery.

The 2018 awards went to three people. Megan Gnekow, a science illustrator, spends parts of June and July counting butterflies at Mount Lassen, in Quincy’s Butterfly Valley, and on Mount Hough. Her grandmother lived in Portola in the 1980s and 1990s and is buried there. “I remember driving up along the Feather River, admiring the power of water to shape rocks,” she said. Her project was a book of drawings of the ecosystems around Black Mountain, to be carried into Plumas County elementary schools.

The other two were the painters Lenora Herndon and Wendy Wayman. Herndon had taught art for nine years at Plumas Christian School, and Wayman had taught English at several colleges. They called their residency “Plein Air par Deux” and borrowed a saying from plein air circles: “it takes two artists to paint: one to paint and the other to tell her when to stop.” Their own account of the work: “In both inspiration and execution, working together helps us meet the demands of chasing the light, working quickly, and battling the hostile elements: like turpentine-seeking horntail wasps or late afternoon winds.”