Location.
Grant County, OR
Status.
Emergency; Currently standing
Estimated drive time from Portland, OR.
6 hours
Date visited.
July 9, 2023
Elevation.
3,660′
National Historic Lookout Register.
US 1637; OR 155
Trip Report.
Day 2/9: Lookout Road Trip 2023
We packed up our camp and headed out of the Starr Campground before 9AM. Our next stop was an easy one. We headed North on HWY-395 towards Canyon City and John Day. We had plenty of gas in the tank, but decided to refuel and fill our Jerry Can in Canyon City. We didn’t want to make the same mistake from our Memorial weekend trip (post). Over the next few days we would be driving through the forest without any access to services. This made our water and gas refills a bit trickier than normal. Once in John Day, we turned right to head farther east on HWY-26 to Prairie City. There are no signs in town that will point you in the right direction of such fire finder, but it’s on the same route you’d take to get to the Strawberry Lake Campground. From Prairie City, we turned right on S Main Street and then left on SW Bridge Street. There is an almost immediate right turn onto to S Bridget Street after this. We followed this road out of town until it turned into CR-60 and Strawberry Road. You will see the box on the right hand side of the road with a small pull out for one or two vehicles. This is an easy pitstop to see some fire finding history if you are ever in the area.
History.
A stand alone Osborne fire finder was built just a mile outside of Prairie City to be used for fire detection in the early 1930s. It is secured in a locked box and used only in emergencies during heavy lightning activity. The box used to be wooden but was replaced sometime between 2016-2018 with a more robust metal box. It has a direct view of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness with some surrounding views of the Malhuer NF.
The Roaming Civic 