Desolation Peak rises in Washington’s North Cascades within Ross Lake National Recreation Area, near the Canada–United States border. Its summit holds a small wooden fire lookout maintained by the National Park Service, remote from the nearest road and overlooking forests and surrounding peaks. First climbed in 1926 by Lage Wernstedt, the mountain took its name after a forest fire that year left its slopes bare. It later gained wider fame through Jack Kerouac, who served there as a fire lookout in the summer of 1956 and used the experience in several books and haiku, giving the isolated summit a lasting place in American literary history.