Chews Ridge Lookout

The Chews Ridge Lookout is located at the northern end of the Santa Lucia Range of the Los Padres National Forest, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Monterey, California, and approximately 30 miles (48 km) west of Highway 101. The current tower was built in 1929 and staffed until around 1990. A volunteer organization began recruiting individuals to staff the tower in 2019. The ridge and tower were named for homesteaders Constantine and Nellie Chew, who patented 315 acres (127 ha) on the ridge in the late 19th century.

In 1919, a family resided in a government-owned cabin at the summit, which also served as a fire lookout. The 12 feet (3.7 m) tall steel frame tower supporting the 13 by 13 feet (4.0 m × 4.0 m) cab was built in 1929. The tower is at an elevation of 5,082 feet (1,549 m). Arthur Story and his wife were among the first residents of the lookout. The lookout was destroyed by the Marble Cone Fire in 1977 and rebuilt in 1978. In 1984 the cab was replaced with a standard R-6 design which featured a cat walk and a flat roof.

The tower cab is accessible by a steep staircase of extremely narrow steps. There is no running water, electrical service, air conditioning, or heating inside the cab. Additionally, there is no cell phone service, landline telephone, or internet connectivity on Chews Ridge. Communications are conducted with a battery-powered U.S. Forest Service radio.

Beginning in the 1940s, the tower was seasonally staffed by C. C. Yates and his wife of Arroyo Grande, California. They continued to work seasonally through the 1950s. The tower has not been staffed by the U.S. Forest Service since about 1990. The Forest Service subsequently used the structure to house radio repeater equipment and to mount antennas. In 2019, the California-South Chapter of the Forest Fire Lookout Association reached an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service to begin staffing the tower with volunteers. They cleaned up the cabin, rehabilitated the pit toilet, reinstalled and refurbished the Osborne Fire Finder, and refurbished the tower inside and out.

The Forest Fire Lookout Association is training volunteers to serve as forest fire lookouts. They began staffing the tower in August 2019. Their goal is to staff the tower seven days per week from May through November. The lookout is accessible from Carmel Valley Road, and then south on Forest Route 18S02/Tassajara Road 9 miles (14 km). Most of the Tassajara Road is unpaved. Some portions of the road are only suitable for high-clearance or four-wheel drive vehicles, and depending on current weather conditions, may become impassible.

The lookout atop Chews Peak was one of six active fire lookouts in the Monterey Ranger District of the Los Padres National Forest. The others were located on Cone Peak, Ventana Double Cone, Junipero Serra Peak, Pinyon Peak, and Three Peaks.

The Esselen people are indigenous to the Santa Lucia Mountains. They left unique handprints on cave walls which are found to the south of Chews Ridge. There is evidence of Esselen occupation, including bedrock mortars found in grasslands near concentrations of Valley Oak.

One of the first non-Native Americans to climb the ridge was William Brewer, who climbed the lower slopes of the ridge in May 1861. Chews Ridge was named for Constantine Marcus and Eleanor "Nellie" (James) Chew, who were married near Monastery Beach in Carmel, California on September 29, 1881. He was 45 and she was 17. They homesteaded two parcels of 155 acres and 160 acres on the ridge to the west of the peak in 1880 and 1892, about 4 miles south of Jamesburg. Constantine Chew was born in Ohio and descended from the Chew family of England. His wife was the daughter of John and Cynthia (Cox) James. Jamesburg was named after her father.