Wagontire Mountain

Type: Two-story lookout
Status: No longer staffed
Elevation: 6,510′
Visited: May 27, 2022

During a stormy, wet, windy Memorial Day Weekend in Harney County I visited two lookouts and Wagontire was up first. I drove Highway 395 south from Highway 20, and just past the community of Wagontire turned right onto an unsigned gravel road, which I followed due north. (If you’re going and want to follow a GPS track you’ll find one here on Peakbagger.) After 5.5 miles I reached a fork and turned right. As expected I reached a gate 0.1 mi later. The gate was open but the road beyond was rough and I needed the exercise so I parked here and started walking:

Wagontire Mountain

I passed a downed tree on the road:

Wagontire Mountain

I saw some nice wildflowers. Yellow desert daisies:

Wagontire Mountain

Phlox:

Wagontire Mountain

Puccoon:

Wagontire Mountain

Prairie violet (Viola praemorsa):

Wagontire Mountain

It was pretty country to walk through, especially right now when everything is still green. It was a pleasant 2.9 mile road hike to the top:

Wagontire Mountain

My first glimpse of the lookout:

Wagontire Mountain Lookout

As I approached, the wind grew stronger:

Wagontire Mountain Lookout

Wagontire Mountain Lookout

Wagontire Mountain Lookout

Looking through the window into the downstairs living quarters:

Wagontire Mountain Lookout

The toilet:

Wagontire Mountain

You can see what the place looked like in better day’s on Ron’s website:

Although I hadn’t gotten rained on during the hike up, rain started passing over the summit while I was up there. I sheltered behind the lookout:

Wagontire Mountain

Wagontire Mountain

Wagontire Mountain

Wagontire Mountain Lookout

I didn’t see cameras installed on this lookout, but I believe they were installed sometime in the summer after my visit. You can see the feed here.

The geocache up here was archived back in 2016. Before heading back down I went over to check out the survey marker and there I found a summit register, which I signed after discovering someone had signed it the day before!

Wagontire Mountain

Heading back down things were looking ominous and indeed I did get rained on about a mile before reaching the car and had to take shelter under a juniper tree:

Wagontire Mountain

More information
Forest Lookouts
Rex’s Forest Fire Lookout Page
National Historic Lookout Register
Peakbagger

History

Wagontire Mountain was named for a discarded wagon tire that lay beside the road on its northern slope.