Clearwater Lookout Cabin

A cabin under the tower

The cabin stands in a green, grassy clearing at 5,600 feet, at the base of the steel legs of Clearwater Lookout. It is a single-story, wood-frame building divided into a kitchen and a bedroom. The bedroom holds four single beds, which Recreation.gov describes as extra-long. A propane heater warms it in winter, and propane also runs the lights, the refrigerator, and the stove and oven. Some cookware, dishes, and utensils are kept on hand. Outside are a fire pit, a picnic table, and an outhouse.

There is no water on the site. Renters haul in what they need for drinking, cooking, and washing, and they carry out their garbage. A mop, bucket, broom, and cleaning supplies are left in the cabin, and guests clean before they leave. The cabin was updated inside and out during the summer of 2023. Cars park beside it, but not on the concrete helipad that lies alongside.

The Umatilla National Forest rents the cabin year round from the Pomeroy Ranger District. Entry is by combination lock, and the combination is given out by telephone before arrival.

The Wenaha-Tucannon country

From the clearing the view runs over the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, across the Northern Blue Mountains of southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. Bunchgrass covers the slopes, with lodgepole pine and subalpine fir higher up. The Forest Service lists Rocky Mountain elk, bighorn sheep, white-tailed and mule deer, black bear, cougar, and coyote in this country, and Chinook salmon and steelhead spawn in the Tucannon and Wenaha rivers below. Horse and hiking trails can be reached from the cabin. In spring and summer there is a short drive along the Tucannon River to Sunset Point. Guests pick mushrooms and berries, and at night they watch the stars. In winter, snowmobilers and skiers use the groomed trails.

In 1940 the Forest Service man Gerald J. Tucker wrote that many visitors to the range thought it would be better called the “Blue Holes.” He explained that the forest roads ran mostly along the ridgetops, with views down into canyons cut 2,000 to 4,000 feet deep.

The road to Clearwater follows a ridge of that kind. It leaves Pomeroy south on 15th Street, which becomes Peola Road and then Mountain Road, and stays paved to the forest boundary. Past the boundary it turns to gravel as Forest Service Road 40 and runs on to Clearwater Junction. The Forest Service gives the distance as about 22 miles. Recreation.gov gives it as about 25 miles, or a 40-minute drive. The sources also differ on when a car can make the trip. The Forest Service says about mid-June through the end of October, depending on weather. Recreation.gov gives June 1 to October 31 in one place and June 1 to November 1 in another. Snow can come early or stay late. In winter the road is closed to cars at the Rose Springs Sno-Park, about a mile and a half inside the boundary. From there the cabin is about 6.5 miles by snowmobile or cross-country skis, on a trail Recreation.gov rates beginner to intermediate.

A steel tower from 1933

The tower is closed to the public. A Civilian Conservation Corps camp built it in 1933 during several months’ work in the Asotin District. The National Historic Lookout Register describes it as an MC-39 steel tower. Its height depends on the source: 94 feet on Recreation.gov and according to the lookout historian Ray Kresek, 90 feet in a Umatilla National Forest inventory, and 82 feet by other accounts. “No matter the exact height,” the register’s entry says, “it’s a darn cool steel tower!” The register puts the elevation at 5,668 feet. Its details table gives the build year as 1938, although its own description says 1933.

The CCC returned in 1935 to build the cabin. Over the years the tower served the public and Forest Service employees as a landmark. It is no longer staffed during fire season but is still used now and then in extreme fire conditions. Because it became a focal point for helicopters, the Forest Service poured the helipad for fire protection work. In August of 2021, the tower’s height made it useful as a temporary radio repeater site on the Lick Creek (Dry Gulch) fire, and the register notes that it remains available for emergencies. On April 11, 2022, on the nomination of Christine Estrada, the tower was entered in the register as US 1522, WA 71.

Clearwater Ranger Station

The cabin and tower belong to an older settlement, which Tucker traced in his 1940 History of the Northern Blue Mountains. An old trappers’ cabin at Clearwater was converted into a ranger station. In 1909 the open glade was fenced for a ranger station pasture, and corrals for counting and separating sheep went up about 1909 or 1910. In 1928 and 1929 Ranger Grover Blake built a three-room house at Clearwater. He used scrap lumber along with lumber donated by stockmen and the game department.

From 1931 to 1939 the forest ranger in that locality was Arzy Kenworthy, whom Tucker called the boss man of the Clearwater Ranger Station. During his years the CCC ran an extensive building program on the Asotin District. In 1933 it put up a barn, a warehouse, an oil house, a garage, and the steel tower at Clearwater. In 1934 a detached crew of six CCC boys under Denver Edison, carpenter foreman, built the ranger’s dwelling.

Albert Baker spent many years as district ranger in the Troy, Oregon, and Pomeroy, Washington, sections of the Blue Mountains. Tucker records that Baker related an older use of the ridge: a great council ground once lay exactly where the Clearwater Lookout tower now stands.