Sourdough Lookout History

In 1915, Glee Davis was assigned to pick a spot to watch for wildfire. He chose Sourdough, maybe because he had an old family trail to the summit. He called it Tent Lookout. Glee Davis wanted to keep the lookout at his rag house camp on the ridge slope above Sourdough Creek, where there was ample firewood and water and a break from the wind, but the regional Forest Service chief from Portland, William Bushnell Osborne (father of the fire finder), visited Sourdough and insisted the lookout belonged on the natural platform at the summit. Glee Davis built the lookout from blueprints of the lookout on Mount Hood. It was the standard twelve-foot square cupola, but unlike subsequent lookout cabins, which were made of precut lumber and glass and bundled in mule kits, Davis and a local blacksmith named Harry Clouds built Sourdough Lookout from boards of fir and red cedar shakes hand-split on the mountain. A neighboring peak to the west has the name Davis Peak after Glee Davis.

In 1920, two schoolteachers, Miss Cora Crosby of Bellingham, and Miss Thompson of Everett were the lookouts.

In 1925, news articles reported the lookout still not visible under snow in May, yet in August, the dense smoke and low-lying clouds made the lookout of no use for a week.

In 1929, Roy Abbott was the lookout. He came up from Oregon State College and became so attached to the Mount Baker Forest that he declined to go back to College that winter. Roy said that he did not get enough of the Mount Baker during the summer as he was not permitted to amble away from his post on top of Sourdough during the summer months, and what he could see lots of country that lured him to it. Therefore, he purchased a string of traps and Miles Garratt's claim to both Big and Little Beaver Creeks as his trapping ground.

In 1933, the new Sourdough lookout was built in the same location, by the Civilian Conservation Corps. To make room, the old structure was burned and knocked down to make room. The new building was rehabilitated in 1998-99.

In 1934, panoramics were taken from the lookout. The lookout person from 1934 to 1936 was Morley Bouck and his dog Duke.

From 1936 to 1939 the lookout was Charles C. Hadd.

In 1951 & 1952, the lookout was manned Shubert Hunter, a nineteen-year-old Native American from the Makah Nation. He remembers not one person coming up the summer of 1952.

In 1953 the lookout was manned by Gary Snyder (who staffed Crater Lookout the summer before). In 1954 and 1955 the lookout was manned by Philip Whalen. Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen were poets highlighted in the book, "Poets on the Peaks".

A lookout named Ken Walin said that during a lightning storm, his telephone had been knocked from the wall and flung across the room.