ROSS LAKE NATIONAL RECREATION AREA — He spends his summers in a glass house perched thousands of feet above some of the most scenic wilderness in the world. He has a 360-degree view of spectacular ...

Idaho was once home to nearly 1,000 fire lookouts — great towers that would stand above the trees, offering 360-degree views of the surrounding wilderness. The towers were used by spotters, who would ...

Washington was once home to hundreds of fire lookouts — great towers that would stand above the trees, offering 360-degree views of the surrounding wilderness. The towers were used by spotters, who ...

“Nobody thought Harkness would go,” Ash Phillips told me plainly. The Mount Harkness Fire Lookout tower was, after all, built atop a sparsely vegetated peak of an ancient cinder cone volcano—not ...

Old towers, big horizons, short(-ish) approaches. Some of these lookouts are still staffed in summer, some are historic shells, and a few are observation towers in parks that scratch the same itch.

There’s a small wooden cabin at the top of Northwest Peak, a few miles from Montana’s borders with Idaho and Canada, and Chuck Manning, 79, believes lookouts like this one deserve a second chance at ...

Perched high atop Mount Bolivar in Northern California, Karita Knisely spends her summer scanning the skies. Most days, all she sees are clouds and trees – the firs and pines of Klamath National ...

Don Allen has saved some of the last historic lookout towers in Oregon, but he couldn’t save the one that meant the most to his father. Don Allen III got a text that struck him with dread. “Looks like ...