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Fire lookout · Hancock County, Maine

Blue Hill Tower Site

Blue Hill Mountain, Hancock Co., ME: 60 ft steel Aermotor; site picked 1947, built 1949 per listing; dismantled 2005 at landowner's request; site today undescribed.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Dismantled in 2005 at the landowner's request; no source describes what remains on the summit

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower60-foot steel Aermotor towerThe design: Aermotor
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1949
Height
60 ft (18.3 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Maine Forest Service
Land
Unknown
Location
Hancock County, Maine
Coordinates
44.43404, −68.59089
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-me-blue-hill

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 3.9 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

  1. 1947 EventMaine Forest Service chose the summit as a fire lookout siteSource: mainememory.net
  2. 1949 BuiltBuild year in the Maine lookout listing (60 ft steel Aermotor); the lookout-history site gives 1947 for a steel towerSource: firelookout.ipage.com
  3. No record between 1949 and 2005
  4. 2005 RemovedTower dismantled; removed at the landowner's requestSources: mainememory.net, firelookout.ipage.com, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  5. 2008 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered on the Former Fire Lookout Sites register, September 15, 2008Source: firetower.org
  6. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Blue Hill Mountain stands just under 1,000 feet high in Hancock County, and its summit gives a broad view of the country around it.1 In 1947 the Maine Forest Service picked the top as the place for a fire lookout tower.1

Sources do not agree on when the tower went up. A Maine lookout listing gives 1949 as the build year for a 60-foot steel Aermotor tower.2 A lookout-history site, drawing on the Maine Historical Society's photo inventory, says a steel tower was set up in 1947.3 A photograph of the tower from about 1950 is in the Blue Hill Historical Society's collection.1

The tower came down in 2005.1,3 The Maine lookout listing and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's register both say it was taken away at the landowner's request.2,4

We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains on the summit today, or whether the site is open to visitors.

  1. Blue Hill Mountain fire tower, Blue Hill, ca. 1950, Maine Memory Network, https://www.mainememory.net/record/33858 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Maine Fire Lookouts state listing, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.ipage.com/lookouts/me/me.htm (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Blue Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/blue-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Blue Hill Tower Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/me/blue-hill-tower-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, county, register numbers, dates, links Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: location, type, status, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: links easternuslookouts.weebly.com · No licence stated; facts only (county, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, status, height, design hints, register links). The site's own historical quotes, newspaper citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.