Fire lookout · Coconino County, Arizona
Mahan Mountain
Coconino NF summit; 30-ft Aermotor tower bought in 1922, replaced in 1936 by a Hutch Mountain tower; FLO lists the tower gone, with remnants reported near the summit.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone; Mountain Field Guide reports remnants of the old lookout near the summit
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. Summit is on Coconino National Forest land; Mountain Field Guide describes a short, lightly traveled summit hike
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- Typical summit route is an old lookout road or forest road, per Mountain Field Guide
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot Aermotor tower bought in 1922; a cabin and cement cistern were planned for the summitThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1922
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- U.S. Forest Service, Coconino National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Coconino County, Arizona
- Coordinates
- 34.78156, −111.39828
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-az-mahan-mountain
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 2.9 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
- 1914 FireFire of under five acres near Lockwood Spring reported on May 22 from seven lookout stations, the farthest located at Mahan MountainSource: westlookouts.weebly.com
- 1922 Built30-foot Aermotor tower bought for $240 and completed; cabin and cement cistern planned for the summitSource: westlookouts.weebly.com
- 1935 Condition assessmentForest Supervisor describes the tower as in fairly good condition and proposes a replacement on Hutch MountainSource: westlookouts.weebly.com
- 1936 Replaced by a new structure30-foot Aermotor model MC-24 tower with 12x12 cab built to replace the Mahan lookout (recorded in the Hutch Mountain entry)Source: westlookouts.weebly.com
- 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.
Mahan Mountain is a forested summit in Coconino National Forest, a few miles north of Happy Jack.1 By 1914 a lookout station there was already reporting fires.2 That May, a fire of less than five acres near Lockwood Spring was reported from seven lookout stations, and the farthest of them was on Mahan.2
The Forest Service bought the tower in 1922.2 It was a 30-foot tower from the Aermotor Company, costing $240, and the plans called for a cabin and a cement cistern on the summit.2
By 1935 the tower was in fairly good condition, the forest supervisor wrote, but he wanted to replace it on Hutch Mountain.2 Hutch stood higher, took in everything Mahan could see, and also covered ground north of it that Mahan could not see.2 The Forest Lookouts entry for Hutch Mountain says that in 1936 a 30-foot Aermotor tower with a 12-by-12 cab was built to replace the lookout on Mahan.2 The Mountain Field Guide says that during the 1930s the Forest Service concluded Hutch offered better fire-detection coverage, so the Mahan lookout was no longer needed.1
The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the Mahan tower as gone.3 The Mountain Field Guide reports that traces of the old lookout still survive close to the summit.1 The Arizona peak list marks the site as a lookout site, a label it uses where the building has been removed, and it adds that the site may show no evidence of the building.4 That key is general rather than a note on Mahan, so this story follows the Field Guide's more specific account.1,4
Today the summit is a brief, lightly visited hike on national forest land, and the Field Guide lists an old lookout road or forest road as the usual approach.1
- Mahan Mountain, Mountain Field Guide, https://mountainfieldguide.com/mahan-mountain/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Arizona - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://westlookouts.weebly.com/arizona.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Arizona Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/az/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Arizona Fire Lookouts, Table 1, Peakbagging, http://www.peakbagging.com/Peak%20Lists/AZ_Lookout1.html (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, status, agency, access, visiting details, 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
- Arizona - Forest Lookouts (Forest Lookouts (westlookouts.weebly.com)) (opens another site)
- Mahan Mountain (Mountain Field Guide) (opens another site)
- Arizona Fire Lookouts, Table 1 (Peakbagging) (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.