BUILDING A TREE HOUSE

"A 90-foot steel ladder salvaged from the old Baker Point lookout in northwest Oregon was transported to Gunter on the upper Smith River in one piece. At the mouth of Yellow Creek, below Gunter, on the Smith River the ladder and supplies were loaded onto two rough lumber boats and floated down to the old Damewood homestead, a distance of twelve miles. At one point one of the boats had to be flooded in order to go under a windfall. From the river the ladder was drug over two miles of trail.

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A couple of months later the materials for the 8x8 crow's nest and guy wires were brought in and the lookout construction completed.

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The tower was constructed to oversee an area that was destroyed by the Smith River burn in 1937."

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The above story was assembled from articles found 25 years ago when researching in the attic at the State Forestry Office in Salem. The source: "Forest Log", May and August 1942 issues.