This site has been created by a number of volunteer fire lookouts for the information and education of the general public. Our group has been staffing Miami Mountain Fire Lookout, which is located in the State of California, in the Sierra National Forest, with volunteer fire lookouts since 1995.

      Our intent was to document the slowly disappearing fire lookouts used for fire prevention and detection, for the general public, across the United States today. Both paid personnel and volunteer lookouts have given of their time to staff these lookouts across the country, by doing a job that has little or no recognition for the duties they perform. Because of the continuing efforts these lookouts have been able to maintain an additional level of fire protection for our local communities and forests, helping protect them from the threat of wildfires during the varying national fire seasons.

      It is our hope that this site will expand and provide a central listing location for Fire Lookout Towers across California. A lookout site may either post their site by submitting a lookout tower link to this domain or by submitting a posting to this domain for the creation of a web-page dedicated to that tower. The submittal link at the end of this page gives more information on submitting a tower to this domain for posting purposes and the requirements for doing so. Unfortunately, I have now retired and expansion of this site seems to be a hope, rather than an actuality now.

      We sincerely hope you will find the information posted on this site and its links, to be educational and informative to you and the general public. This site does not capture any personnel information, so if it is requested from you for any reason, please do not respond to it. While browsing the site if you find any inappropriate content on this site or a linked site please report it immediately to the webmaster at webmaster@fire-lookouts.org so it may be resolved or removed.

      This site is dedicated to my very best friend Josiah Knowles, Jr. (Joe Knowles) for his many years of friendship, work and support for the volunteer fire lookout program at Miami Mountain in the Sierra National Forest. Joe passed away on the evening of October 26, 2006 while on duty and closing up the tower for the evening and on June 27, 2009, the Sierra National Forest dedicated the tower in his memory and name.