Vent: The old fire lookout tower near me is falling apart and nobody cares

Jamie Ward · 2026-07-07T07:05:05.340958+00:00

I drove up to the old Devil's Peak lookout tower last weekend, the one that's been sitting empty since 2008. The stairs are all rusted out and the glass in the windows is busted. Back when I first started, that tower was still staffed part-time during fire season, and the guy up there could spot a campfire ten miles away. Now it's just another structure the Forest Service says they can't afford to fix. There's something about climbing up there and seeing the whole valley, you get why we had those towers in the first place. Anyone else have a spot like that, something that used to be a real job but now it's just a memory?

the_brian2mo ago

Not everyone sees an old tower and thinks it needs saving.

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evan_cooper732mo ago

Camp Creek tower in Montana lasted about 15 years after they closed it before someone finally bought it and fixed it up as a cabin. I volunteered on a restoration crew for a similar tower in Idaho and we got the stairs and windows done in one summer with donated lumber and local volunteers. It takes a community to save these things, but it can be done if people care enough to organize.

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nguyen.angela2mo ago

Wait, they really just left a whole fire lookout tower to rot like that since 2008? That's wild to me, those structures were literally saving lives.

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