Hirz Mountain Lookout

Hirz Mountain Lookout is a glass-walled cab on a steel K-brace tower. The tower stands on a sharp limestone peak above the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake, and the last quarter mile to it has to be walked. Road 35N04 ends at a locked gate and parking area. Beyond the gate the trail climbs over steep, rocky, slippery ground, and the Forest Service recommends shoes with good tread and ankle support. The summit is posted as a high cliff area and danger zone, with a warning to take particular care with children.

Road 35N04 and the last quarter mile

From Redding, Interstate 5 runs north about 20 miles to Gilman Road, exit 698. Gilman Road runs east about five miles to 35N04, and 35N04 runs about five more to the gate. It is a single-lane dirt road with limited sight distance. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest describes it as a high-clearance mountainous road, recommends four-wheel drive, and calls the lookout one for “the adventuresome.”

Sources differ on the summit’s height. The Forest Service history sheet and Recreation.gov give 3,540 feet, and the National Historic Lookout Register gives 3,451. From the catwalk the view runs all the way around. Mt. Shasta’s snow-laced peak stands to the north and Mt. Lassen to the southeast. The gray limestone exposures of Hirz Mountain fall away below. To the east, in the words of the Forest Service sheet, “the narrow blue-green ribbon of the McCloud River Arm winds past the east side of Hirz Mountain, extending north and south as far as the eye can see.” The same sheet notes that among rocky outcroppings like these “it is not unusual to see a rattlesnake.” Bears frequent the area as well.

A fourteen-foot room on the rock

The register describes the cab as a 14-by-14-foot BC-3 live-in cab. It holds two twin beds, with cabinets and dressers for storage and cleaning supplies left for each party to tidy up before going. A Forest Service brochure revised in March 2015 listed two additional mattresses and a capacity of four. Recreation.gov now describes sleeping space for two. There are no cooking facilities, linens, bedding, water, or electricity. Guests carry in enough water for their stay and garbage bags to carry out their trash. A picnic table sits below the tower.

The sources also differ on the toilet. Recreation.gov describes a composting toilet in a separate building, which guests maintain daily by posted guidelines. The forest’s own page and the 2015 brochure list a vault toilet.

The lookout is under year-round fire restrictions, and no wood or charcoal fires are allowed. Cooking is done on a portable gas or liquid-fuel stove, with a California campfire permit. The cab is rented as a single site, one party at a time, from May 1 to October 15. A group may stay at most four nights in a year. Recreation.gov names sightseeing and stargazing as the main pursuits, and the brochure’s packing list includes a camera and binoculars.

Henry Hirz and the McCloud headwaters

The McCloud River Wintu held the mountain in reverence and had their own name for it. Its present name came from Henry Hirz, a gold miner who lived on Hirz Creek in the 1860s. He was one of the earliest white men in the McCloud River country.

The Forest Service valued the summit for fire detection because it looked directly into the headwaters of the McCloud River and most of its tributaries. According to Recreation.gov, the first lookout here sat on the ground. In 1937 the Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps rebuilt the cabin and added a garage and an outhouse. It was one of the last lookouts of the CCC era. The register gives a shorter account: the lookout was constructed in 1937 on what was then the Shasta National Forest, one of the last the CCC built in California.

Raised in 1949, restored in 2005

In 1949 the cab was lifted onto the steel tower, which stands 20 feet above the ground and carries a catwalk around the cab. The register lists 1949 as the lookout’s building date.

In 2005 the lookout was restored as a Forest Service Centennial Event, in partnership with the Forest Retirees Association and the National Forest Foundation. Afterward it entered the cabin rental system. The register entered it on May 10, 2005, as US 638 and CA 74. When the brochure was revised in March 2015, the rental was marked temporarily closed. A later Forest Service spending report under the Great American Outdoors Act lists a Hirz Mountain Lookout Restoration project for 2021, with an allocation of $102,270.

The brochure also records the dedication. On June 15, 2005, the lookout was dedicated “in honor of the men and women watching over our National Forest for the past 100 years.”