Fire lookout · Gila County, Arizona
Mount Ord Lookout (now at the Rim Country Museum)
Also known as Rim Country Museum
The 1936 Aermotor MC 39 lookout from Mount Ord, Gila County, AZ, was replaced in 1983 and is now on display at the Rim Country Museum in Payson.
- Standing
- Open to the public
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Open to the public. On display at the Rim Country Museum in Payson; museum admission covers its exhibits. Check current hours; the tourist listing is undated.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerAermotor MC 39 steel tower, dated 1936The design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1936
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- U.S. Forest Service (original owner of the Mount Ord tower)
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Gila County, Arizona
- Coordinates
- 34.23236, −111.34469
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-az-mount-ord-at-rim-country-museum
View from the cab
What you see from the 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.
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
- 1936 BuiltAermotor MC 39 tower dated 1936Sources: nhlr.org, mountainfieldguide.com
- No record between 1936 and 1983
- 1983 Replaced by a new structureForest Service replaced the 1936 tower with the current 102-foot CL-100 towerSources: nhlr.org, mountainfieldguide.com
- Date unknown MovedMoved from Mount Ord to the Rim Country Museum in Payson; no date givenSources: nhlr.org, city-data.com
- TodayStandingIt still stands, as far as our sources know.
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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Mount Ord's 1936 lookout was an Aermotor MC 39 tower.1,2 The mountain sits in the Tonto National Forest in Gila County, Arizona.1 The tower served the mountain for close to fifty years.2 In 1983 the Forest Service built a taller, 102-foot tower to take the old one's place. It has a 14-by-14-foot metal cab and catwalk, and it still stands on the summit.1,2
The 1936 tower now sits at the Rim Country Museum in Payson, Arizona.1 The register gives no date for the move.1 A tourist listing for the museum calls the tower one of its exhibits, and says admission covers all of the attractions.3 That listing is undated, so check the museum's current hours and displays before you go.
The Arizona fire lookout list shows the museum tower as standing, but it does not say when anyone last checked it.4
Anyone who wants to see the old tower should visit the museum, where it is a display. The sources do not suggest it can be climbed, so treat it as a museum piece.
- Mount Ord Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/az/mount-ord-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Mount Ord (Arizona), Mountain Field Guide, https://mountainfieldguide.com/mount-ord/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Rim Country Museum, City-Data, https://www.city-data.com/articles/Rim-Country-Museum.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Fire Lookouts, Arizona, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/az/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, dates, 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, 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
- Mount Ord Lookout (National Historic Lookout Register) (opens another site)
- Mount Ord (Arizona) (Mountain Field Guide) (opens another site)
- Rim Country Museum (City-Data.com) (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.