Girard Ridge Lookout

A green Forest Service gate closes the last half mile of road to Girard Ridge Lookout. Renters get the combination by telephoning the McCloud Ranger Station a week before they arrive. Past the gate stands a fourteen-foot-square cab on a wooden tower, 4,809 feet above the Sacramento River Canyon on a ridge east of Interstate 5. The Forest Service built it in 1931 and staffed it regularly until 1981. It now rents by the night to parties of four or fewer, from June or July through October, depending on the snow.

The road up from Soda Creek

The way in leaves the interstate at the Soda Creek exit, 726, and heads east across the railroad tracks and the Sacramento River. A right turn onto Riverside, a narrow, curving paved road, leads to Girard Ridge Road, Forest Service Road 38N23, which climbs steeply in places. The pavement ends 1.9 miles from the interstate. The road passes a set of microwave towers and reaches the top of the hill about 6.5 miles out, where Road 39N13 turns off to the left. Six-tenths of a mile along it, an unnumbered road on the left carries a sign reading Girard Ridge Lookout with an arrow, and it ends at the gate.

The whole run from the exit is about 7.5 miles, mostly on dirt, and the Forest Service says it can take at least an hour. Recreation.gov recommends high-clearance vehicles. It warns that the roads are at times steep and narrow and run mostly through private timberland, where drivers should expect log trucks.

A cab fourteen feet square

The National Historic Lookout Register describes the structure as an L-4 cab, 14 by 14 feet, with a catwalk, set atop an enclosed, tapered wooden tower 13 feet high. The cab has a gable roof, and a flight of stairs climbs to it. Inside are two twin beds with mattresses, cabinets, a table for meals, and a mop, broom, and cleansers. A 2010 Forest Service brochure listed the furnishings differently: two cots, a shovel, a bucket, a dish pan, cleaning supplies, and a fire extinguisher.

There is no water, no electricity, and no cooking facility. Visitors carry up their own water, light, bedding, dishes, and garbage bags, and they need a heat source when the weather turns cool. Gas and liquid-fuel stoves are allowed with a California campfire permit. Wood and charcoal fires are not, and no one may smoke inside the lookout. The vault toilet stands in a separate building, down the stairs and about 30 feet off. Picnic tables sit on the grounds.

Shasta, the Crags, and Lassen

From the catwalk, Mount Shasta lies to the north. To the west, the gray spires of the Castle Crags frame almost the entire view. To the southeast is the distant silhouette of Lassen Peak, though the Forest Service notes that the abundant trees may block it. Recreation.gov describes bright, starry skies at night. Northern California mixed conifer forest surrounds the ridge, and bears and other animals live in it.

The Forest Service gives the elevation as 4,809 feet. The lookout register gives 4,753. Walkers can follow the Forest Service road north for 3 miles from the lookout to where it meets the Pacific Crest Trail. Castle Crags State Park is nearby, with trails into the Castle Crags Wilderness and places to fish and swim in the Sacramento River.

An experimental station and its restorers

The Forest Service says the lookout was particularly significant as an experimental station for testing the findings of the 1930 Region 5 fire detection study, which places it on the ridge the year after that study. The agency calls it reportedly the oldest lookout of its particular design remaining in California. The lookout register drops the hedge. It identifies the design as a 1917 plan unique to the California region and calls Girard Ridge the oldest structure of its type remaining in the state. Regular detection work went on for fifty years and ended in 1981.

In 1997 and 1998, the Forest Service restored the lookout to its original character. Volunteers came from the Castle Crags Interpretive Association, the Dunsmuir Chamber of Commerce, and the Dunsmuir schools, and local building contractors and businesses donated to the work. The lookout entered the rental program in 1998. On May 15 of that year, on a nomination from Ron Johnson of the Forest Fire Lookout Association, it was entered on the National Historic Lookout Register as US 266, CA 10. The Forest Service also lists it as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

The 2010 brochure states that rental fees go to maintaining the lookout. In 2017, the forest put $6,000 of recreation fee money into the structure. Crews replaced the staircase to meet safety standards and installed a vapor barrier to protect the internal supports from decay. They added new sheathing, built to historical standards, which increased the shear strength of the tower and protected its framing and support posts. They also took out two 10-by-10-inch main support beams, rotten and decaying, and replaced them.