By KEITH MCCOY
Very often, as we make our daily rounds, our eye falls on Mount Adams -- standing high, alone and aloof surrounded by its own Wilderness Area and the Yakama Indian Reservation.
Seldom, however, do we pause to think about what man has done on the mountain. I was recently reminded of this when Dan Jagelski, who heads the Klickitat County Trails program, sent me a set of photos taken on the mountain on Labor Day. The photos show the former Forest Service lookout building as a deteriorating hulk surrounded by its perpetual shield of ice and snow. From its very beginning 80 years ago, the prevailing westerly winds had plastered it with this mantle of ice and snow.
Another set of photos, contributed by a grandson of Jesse Mann, shows the building when it was completed in the summer of 1922. Jesse Mann was district ranger on the Mount Adams District when the lookout was built.
It all began in 1915 when one Elijah Coalman pioneered a lookout on the summit of Mount Hood. Almost single-handedly, he strung a crude telephone line from Government Camp to the summit and from his wind-whipped tent, reported fires that summer. He was so successful that the then Oregon National Forest and the Columbia National Forest decided to construct lookouts on the summits of Mount Hood, Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens. Not only could they cover a vast area but could triangulate the location of any smoke observed.
The fabled Elijah Coalman, again almost as a one-man effort packed most of the materials for a 14 by 14 foot lookout cabin to the summit of Mount Hood, carpentered it and it became the first high peak lookout.
The similar Mount Adams station was begun in 1919 and completed and occupied in 1922. Two young Trout Lake stalwarts, Arthur Jones and Adolph Schmid, carried out the project. Materials, for the most part, were carried to the 9,000 foot level by pack train, then backpacked to the 12,307 foot summit. Some loads were sledded over the steep snowfields. A telephone line strung from Trout Lake to the summit was no small project.
Jones and Schmid did some lookout duty during the construction period and served through 1922. The station was then manned by Ernie Colwell and Rudy Dietrich until it was abandoned in 1924.
Unfortunately, Coalman's early successes could not continue. It was soon found that the lookouts were too high and that the smoke of forest fires, the increasing air pollution from the growing cities and frequent summer storms obscured much of the forest land.
Once abandoned, the lookout building deteriorated rapidly. Careless climbers did not always secure the door and high winds filled the structure with snow and ice.
In the 1930s, the Glacier Mining Company, exploring the feasibility of transporting and marketing the vast sulfur supplies in the dormant crater, made use of the cabin. At times the 14 by 14 food building with its 8 by 8 windowed cupola housed as many as nine men.
In 1937, the mining company built a lean-to on the leeward side of the lookout cabin so that the bulky diamond drill equipment and other tools could be housed there instead of in the already overcrowded cabin. It, too, is now filled with ice so that not even the tools can be seen.
The mountain top exploration was interrupted by World War II. It was never fully resumed and now, under Wilderness Area rules, is a closed book. The harsh mountain top elements will continue to slowly demolish the once-proud Mount Adams lookout.
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