Two and a half hours north of Sacramento — halfway from anywhere — an ancient metal and wood observation tower perches atop a hillside. For 92 years, someone has kept watch from the Colby Mountain Fire Lookout during the long dry months when California tends to burn.
But no more. The U.S. Forest Service has shut down the lookout and told its last occupant, Kenny Jordan, that they don’t plan to bring him back next summer for what would have been his 42nd fire season in the Lassen National Forest.
Jordan’s ouster and the proposed shutdown of the landmark tower — built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1934 — has touched off a tempest in rural Butte County. Locals say that Jordan provided an extra layer of security, often as the first person to notice telltale wisps of smoke marking another wildland fire, not to mention the helping hand he offered hikers, bikers and other strangers.
“We are so prone to fire. That’s the main priority up here,” said Laurie Bowers, a Butte Meadows local campaigning to keep Jordan and the tower in place. “We call Kenny Jordan our eyes in the sky. When something’s going on, everyone asks, ‘What does Kenny say?’ “
Two cameras atop the 30-foot-high steel tower can help the Forest Service remotely monitor the terrain. But locals say the technology can’t always tell a fog bank from a nascent fire. Jordan’s “level of judgment and situational awareness cannot be replicated by cameras or automated systems alone,” Bowers said. “His understanding is priceless.”
The Butte County Board of Supervisors has joined the campaign to keep the tower open. In a letter this week to Lassen National Forest Supervisor Rick Hopson, the supervisors noted that their stretch of California has repeatedly been savaged by wildfire. In 2018, roughly 40 miles to the north, the Camp fire destroyed much of Paradise and neighboring communities.
“The Forest Service should be looking at ways of increasing public safety, rather than reducing it,” the county supervisors wrote. “The Colby Mountain fire lookout provides a proven capability that complements — rather than replaces — modern fire detection technologies.”
Jordan, 77, recalled the mid-October day when a crew from the Forest Service came to the mountain for what he believed would be his regular fall departure, shutting up the fire tower until its reopening next summer. Instead, he said, a supervisor told him, “We have to get all your stuff out. You’re not coming back.”
“I was dumbstruck. In a state of shock,” Jordan said. “There was not even a ‘thank you’ for my service all these years.”
Hopson and others at the Forest Service did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
As many as 7,000 fire lookout towers once dotted the landscape nationally, but only about 2,000 remain, an estimated 500 of them staffed, said Michael Guerin, chair of the Forest Fire Lookout Assn., a national group dedicated to preserving the watch towers.
It costs as little as $17,000 a season to staff a fire lookout, said Guerin. “They say we need every tool in the toolbox to fight these big fires,” Guerin said. “Well this is one tool that doesn’t cost that much that we’re throwing away.”
Not long into the new millennium, Jordan was impressed by one visitor to the fire tower. She asked how giant fire plumes seem to collapse on themselves.
“She was smart as a whip. Well, we started dating and 17 months later we were married,” Jordan recalled of his wife, Cheryl. They spent long summer nights atop the lookout, cooking on a propane stove and monitoring visitors, human and animal. He’s gone it alone since 2021, when Cheryl died. Her ashes sit close at hand, in an urn decorated with the image of a fire lookout.
Jordan said he would not have traded his life atop the tower for anything.
“The first thing about it is the view, up there at 6,000 feet. The sense of being remote. You get away from it all. And sometimes at night you’d have meteor showers. Bears would wander past. And you get to know the people who hike up there. Some would even bring me cookies,” Jordan said. “There was a sense of freedom, just watching the world go by.”
ICE protesters crowd the front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles to demonstrate against the administration and those killed by ICE.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
- Federal agents have deployed new tactics for arrests.
- Agents move faster now, making it difficult for immigration activists to respond before the targets are whisked away, organizers and activists say.
- Overall, ICE is finding it increasingly fraught to target violent criminals due to the community backlash over indiscriminate sweeps.
- Anti-ICE ‘National Shutdown’ protests are planned in L.A. County. Here’s where to find them.
- Peet’s Coffee is closing at least two Southern California locations by month’s end as part of a broader store realignment affecting 27 of 283 locations nationwide.
- The closures follow Keurig Dr Pepper’s $18-billion takeover of parent company JDE Peet’s.
- Unionized workers claim management failed legal obligations to bargain over closures.
- These California companies want to make keyboards obsolete with voice-based AI diction.
- Have you ever dreamed of owning a flying car? This California company is already selling them.
- California’s 2026 gubernatorial race lacks a clear front-runner for the first time in more than 25 years
- More voters are undecided than backing any candidate.
- The race has received little national attention and lacks a candidate who has captured voters’ imagination.
June Mountain ski resort, popular with families, offers lessons and many beginner and intermediate runs.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Tess van Hulsen and Andrew Chait’s living room is filled with secondhand furniture, art and accessories. The sofa is from Home Consignment Center, and the chairs and coffee table are from Facebook Marketplace.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Ronaldo Bolaños at the rental of a Westwood couple who have furnished their rental almost entirely with thrifted and secondhand finds.
Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.