Mt Tamalpais Fire Lookout Station

Gardner Fire Lookout

“Keep your eyes open to spot the Gardner fire lookout as you approach East Peak. Its native stone at first glance blends with the rock of the peak. Use of local materials was a major feature of the ‘park rustic’ style of many CCC projects. You will have an excellent view of the tower from the parking lot at the base of the peak. The park Visitor Center and a wheelchair-accessible picnic area are also located by East Peak.

The 1920th built this tower between 1935 and 1936. It is still an active Marin County Fire Department lookout. As you view the sturdy stone, wood and steel tower perched on the peak, imagine hauling all the materials up either by cable or by hand. That is how the veterans of the 1920th did it. They also built a water system, including the rock pressure pump house that you can see below the peak, and ran electricity and phone lines. According to Marin County Fire Department history, ‘. . . equipped with electricity, hot and cold running water, and telephone, this lookout was acclaimed ‘The Deluxe Lookout Station of California.'”

https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=25060

Thanks to Bob Gagnier

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

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