JACKSON COUNTY
PALMER PEAK
Crater National Forest
39S-4W-27
39S-4W-27
1913: "Trails are fairly numerous, and inaccessibility is not a question causing worry. It is proposed to construct a trail and telephone line to Palmer Peak and station a lookoutman there. From this point most of the area can be seen." (History of the Rogue River National Forest - Carroll Brown)
1914: The lookout, a ten foot tree.
July 9, 1914: "Fort McKee has taken his stand on Palmer Creek Knob as forest fire lookout." (Medford Mail Tribune)
August 27, 1914: Leonard McKee recently visited his brother Fort, who is on the Palmer Creek lookout." (Medford Mail Tribune)
1916: "The observer on Palmer Peak has had his camp close to the summit. It is a 10-minute walk up from the spring. He cannot see the whole horizon from the point where his tent stands. To take up observations he has to run 200 feet or so to the top and get above the trees that shelter the tent, and while in the tent he could of course see nothing even if it were on the very top. The temptation in such a case is to spend more time than is necessary in the tent under the trees, out of the broiling heat and glare of the sun. I am inclined to think that such an arrangement is worse than if camp were established at the spring. The only advantage is that he is at his 'phone at all hours of the day and night, a result that could be obtained almost as well by the installation of a call bell if camp were at the spring. Were he housed in a strongly built house well anchored on the very top of the mountain, the house provided with a 'ribbon' of glass and fitted perhaps on top of a tower, the object would be attained which is now inadequately secure by tenting near the top.
The map board on Palmer Peak is located on a tower on the highest point, but the telephone is some distance away. Even in my few hours visit to the lookout, the observer in reporting a fire had to go more than once back to his map and alidade while the ranger left the line open for further information.
In order to provide an unobstructed view would require a 120-foot steel tower. An observation by the Author on his visit on his visit in the 1915 fire season." (The Fire Lookout System on the Crater National Forest, Harold D. Foster, 1916)