In 2020, I was lucky to meet Dick Morrison, over the phone and by email, while searching for answers about the fate of the Little Summit Lookout on Orcas Island. Dick is one of the senior members of the growing brigade of Fire Lookout Fans. Dick answered my questions and we then exchanged lookout history and tall tales during these conversations. I am including a lightly edited version of Dick’s answers and other bits of lookout lore in this Post.
Dick, the Fire Lookout Fan: Dick said that he is a long time Fire Lookout fan and is active in the FFLA. He went to college and got a degree in Forestry because he wanted to be a lookout. By the time he graduated in 1973 most lookout jobs had been eliminated by aerial survey planes. Dick said that he has had the privilege of being a relief lookout at Hickman Butte Lookout which is inside Portland’s Bull Run Watershed. It had been a life-long dream to be a lookout, and that dream has been fulfilled with that opportunity.
Dick and other FFLA members were active in moving and re-constructing the East Flattop Lookout Cab which is displayed at the Columbia Breaks Fire Interpretive Center.
Dick’s story of the East Flattop Cab move: “The second story of the East Flattop Lookout was completely taken apart ~ to the “bare bones” for the move from Flattop. Dick, Keith Argow,and my brother Jim and 3 Forest Service retirees, took it apart on Flattop. “
“The pieces were loaded on a trailer, and taken to a ranger station on Hwy 12 near Rim Rock Lake Ranger Station where it sat for over a year and a half before it was moved. (Dick and his brother hauled the trailer behind their pickup & the brakes went out along the way to the Ranger station at Rim Rock ranger station.) The trailer was reloaded on another trailer at the ranger station by volunteers from Columbia Breaks and they brought it up to Entiat by volunteers there. Then Dick, Forrest Clark and 3 FFLA members and volunteers from Columbia Breaks, put it back together at Columbia breaks in Entiat. Forrest Clark was the leader in the glass work. The 2 nd story Flattop Lookout at Entiat is not a replica. It was all put together using the parts from the original. The only thing not original was the glass and the shingles as they were already missing when the lookout was taken apart to be moved from Flattop. A concrete pad was poured to put the lookout on at Entiat to make it wheel chair accessible.”
Dick, the lookout fanatic, has owned at times two lookouts and three re-located lookouts.
Bald Butte, Dick’s 1st Lookout: “In 1967 I purchased Bald Butte Lookout which was south of Hood River and the Forest Service asked me if I could hold off from removing it for a couple of years. I agreed to that and when they were through with it, I was in college and not able to go take it down, so I lost that one but I still have the Bald Butte sign from the lookout. A funny thing happened with that situation, I had the sign over the mantel of one of our homes, and we had a visitor and she asked why we would have a sign about a bald butt in our living room! She didn’t know about lookouts.”
Tunk Mountain, Dick’s 2nd Lookout: Dick told me that he had also bought the Tunk Mountain Lookout from the DNR and then got the special permit to leave it in place. He later sold this to Keith Argow, the FFLA Chairman.
Information in the book Fire Lookouts of the Northwest by Ray Kresek, the 2015 revision to the Lookout inventory of that book and two associate websites indicated that two of the Re-Located Lookouts had been sold to Dick Morrison in the 1980s who had then had moved them to Friday Harbor. The first of these lookouts was the Three Corner Rock Lookout near Stevenson and the Columbia Gorge. Ray Kresek’s 2015 Lookout Inventory entry for Three Corner Rock reads in part: “DNR cab (sold to Dick Morrison to become 2nd story of his home at Friday Harbor.” There is not as much information about the second of these 2 Re-located Lookouts. This is the Little Summit Lookout which was moved from Orcas Island. Ray Kresek’s 2015 Lookout Inventory entry for Little Summit reads in part: “50’ DNR twr (sold to Dick Morrison and moved to Friday Harbor)”. Since I had found no other information on the Little Summit LO move, I asked Dick: 1) was only the cab moved or was the whole cab and 50’ tower?; 2) Where was the lookout moved to?; 3) what was the moved lookout used for?; 4) Does this moved lookout still exist and where? Also, since the Three Corner Rock Lookout was moved so far and both moves required movement across water, any information about the details of these moves and their difficulty would be very interesting.
Dick’s answer about Three Corner Rock, his 1st re-located LO:
“It took 2 seasons to take the Three Corner Rock Lookout apart and to move it to Friday Harbor. Again, they took the cab completely apart ~ to the “bare bones”. The only thing that was carried off the rock by hand was the glass. They parked a big boat trailer on the nearby flat spot ~ probably where the communication towers are now ~ and strung a high line with pulleys from the top of the rock to the boat trailer. They then used it to move the rest of the lookout, board-by-board, down to the trailer using gravity.”
“This lookout was used as the second story of Dick’s new house in Friday Harbor. It was his bedroom and Dick now claims to have slept in a lookout for more nights than anyone else. One of the Mt. St Helens’ early puffs of ash, which preceded the big one, blew while they were taking the 3 Corner Rock lookout apart. So, this would place it at around April 1980.”
Dick’s answer about Little Summit, his 2nd re-located LO:
“This is what happened to Little Summit: My brother Jim and I removed the DNR cab, and used the glass on our Friday Harbor lookout house. The cedar shutters went to another lookout, I don’t remember which one. A FFLA member needed a set of shutters for their lookout. Most of the wood went to other projects and I’ll bet the 2 by 12 rafters are still in the loft in the shop on that property. I used the glass from Little Summit because it was tinted smoke gray where the 3 corner rock glass was clear. The glass is 2 feet square and 1/4″ thick.”
Later Dick sold his Friday Harbor lookout house and moved to his current place near Chehalis.
When I asked Dick about the details of his two re-located lookouts, he then told me that he had actually re-located three lookouts. After helping Ray Kresek and others move the 2nd story of the East Flattop Lookout to the Columbia Breaks Fire Interpretive Center, the 1st story was moved to his place near Chehalis.
Dick’s answer about his 3rd re-located LO: “The first story of the Flattop Lookout was left intact after the 2 nd story was moved. The company that was to build the cell towers near it called Dick and told him that it had to be removed. The cell tower people took it apart into 5 wall and floor pieces and then they moved it to Dick’s place in Chehalis where he put it back together.” It is now use as a storage shed.
Dick also told another story about Three Corner Rock. It could be very windy there. When the lookout building was being constructed, a construction worker was carrying a sheet of plywood to the top when the wind came up. The plywood acted as a parasail and the worker and plywood were blown over the edge and the worker was killed. 3 Corner rock was a ground house, no tower. This was a DNR Cab.
Dick added several other points of interest including his visit to Olympia to the Department of Natural Resources shop where all the DNR lookouts were pre-cut. It was neat to see the patterns and jigs that were used to cut out the pieces. All the parts were numbered with a stamp so the assemblers on the mountain top could reassemble the tower and cabs. I got to see the actual metal stamps that were used to mark the pieces. That area is now a big shopping center on Sleeter Kinney Blvd.
Many of you know that the Forest Service used precut “kits” for the L4 lookouts, these were made in Portland, Oregon, by the Aladdin manufacturing company. I went to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland and researched where the building was where they were produced, and then went to the site and found the building was still there. Aladdin also made complete house kits that were sold to families who wanted to build their own houses. These were sold in the Sears and Montgomery wards catalog in the 30’s and early prewar catalogs.
At one time, off of the Lolo pass road going to Lost Lake, there was an Aladdin lookout “kit” still bundled together that was supposed to have been erected East of Hickman Butte Lookout.