Signal’s first fire lookout in 1920 was a pole tower with tent camp, later replaced in 1935 by a 3-legged 55′ wooden tower with 8’x8′ cab and ground house with living quarters.

The current 68′ Aermotor tower was moved in 1964 from nearby Panther Creek. Aermotor steel towers were built by the Aermotor Company of Chicago, IL, founded in 1888. In the 1920s, a few steel towers started showing up in the Pacific Northwest and in the 1930s, several more were built predominantly east of the Cascades.

Curiously, the lookout has no guy wires and one of our Yakama tour guides joked that as a child, he and his friends would climb the lookout and rock it back and forth. He also told us a story of a lookout locking herself in the ground house because of a Bigfoot that had come up the road.