Fire lookout · Coconino County, Arizona
Bright Angel Point
Grand Canyon fire tower built 1928 at Bright Angel Point; moved in 1933 to the north entrance as North Rim Lookout, which still stands. The original site is gone.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.
Visit & stay
Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.
Access
Open to the public. Intermountain Histories says the North Rim Lookout Tower is available to hikers; no source says whether the cab is open to visitors
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower75-foot Aermotor steel tower with 7x7-foot cabThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1928
- Height
- 75 ft (22.9 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- National Park Service
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Coconino County, Arizona
- Coordinates
- 36.21544, −112.05842
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-az-bright-angel-point
View from the cab
What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.
This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and its recorded height.
Downloads about 3.0 MB of terrain data the first time.
Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.
History
Then and now
- 1928 BuiltSteel tower about 75 feet tall built at Bright Angel Point, replacing a Forest Service wooden platformSources: nhlr.org, grcahistory.org, intermountainhistories.org
- 1933 MovedCivilian Conservation Corps moved the tower to the park's north entrance; it became known as North Rim Lookout (about fourteen miles away, per Intermountain Histories)Sources: nhlr.org, grcahistory.org, intermountainhistories.org
- No record between 1933 and 2009
- 2009 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered April 25, 2009 as US 804, AZ 69Source: nhlr.org
- TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.
Old maps of this spot
USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Before Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919, the Forest Service had built a wooden lookout platform at Bright Angel Point on the North Rim.1 In 1928 the park replaced that platform with a steel tower about 75 feet tall, topped by a small observation cab.2,1,3 Lookouts lived in a cabin under the tower.3
Edward Abbey, the environmentalist and novelist, spent several summers manning the tower, and the experience informed his writing.1 The same site also says he worked four seasons there.1 Intermountain Histories dates his four seasons to the late 1960s and early 1970s.3 The sources do not reconcile the two counts.
In 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps crews moved the tower to the park's north entrance, about fourteen miles from its original site, and it became known as the North Rim Lookout.2,1,3 According to the register, the relocated tower no longer serves fire detection.2 Intermountain Histories reports that Stephen Pyne's book Fire on the Rim cites Abbey as the reason the park ended its lookout tower operations, and that the park chose aerial fire spotting instead.3
The moved tower was registered on April 25, 2009, as US 804, AZ 69, and the National Park Service administers it.2 A Grand Canyon history site calls it the North Rim Tower and includes a photo of how it appears now.1 Intermountain Histories says it is available to hikers.3 None of these sources says whether visitors can go up into the cab.
We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the original Bright Angel Point site. The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists that tower as gone.4
- Fire tower at Bright Angel Point, Nature, Culture and History at the Grand Canyon, https://grcahistory.org/sites/north-rim/fire-tower-at-bright-angel-point/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- North Rim Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/az/north-rim-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- North Rim Lookout Tower, Intermountain Histories, https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/709 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Arizona Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/az/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, agency, access, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story
More about this lookout elsewhere
- North Rim Lookout (National Historic Lookout Register) (opens another site)
- Fire tower at Bright Angel Point (Nature, Culture and History at the Grand Canyon) (opens another site)
- North Rim Lookout Tower (Intermountain Histories) (opens another site)
- FFLA Arizona lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.