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Fire lookout · Kennebec County, Maine

Mount Pisgah Fire Tower

1949 Maine Forest Service 60-foot Aermotor tower on Mount Pisgah; retired 1991-92, now town-owned with a land trust easement and open to the public.

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Open to the public. Tower property is 94 acres, owned by the Town of Winthrop and protected with a Kennebec Land Trust easement. The Land Trust and the register describe the tower as open to the public.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Tower Trail: 0.7 mile moderate trail from a Land Trust parking lot on Mt. Pisgah Road
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower60-foot Aermotor steel tower with 7x7-foot cabThe design: Aermotor
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1949
Height
60 ft (18.3 m)
Elevation
810 ft (247 m)
Agency
Town of Winthrop, Maine (owner); built by Maine Forest Service
Land
Unknown
Location
Kennebec County, Maine
Coordinates
44.30608, −70.02392
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-me-mount-pisgah

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 4.2 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. 1949 BuiltMaine Forest Service constructed the 60-foot tower with a 7x7 cabSources: nhlr.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1949 and 1991
  3. 1991 EventLand Trust says the tower was in use from 1949 to 1991Source: tklt.org
  4. 1992 EventForest Lookouts summary records the lookout as de-commissioned in 1992Source: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1992 and 2008
  6. 2008 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered June 10, 2008 as US 736, ME 11Source: nhlr.org
  7. 2008 EventBy August 2008 the Town of Winthrop owned the tower, managed jointly with the Kennebec Land Trust, which holds a conservation easementSources: easternuslookouts.weebly.com, tklt.org
  8. 2012 EventVandals ripped a safety rail from around the cab's entry holeSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  9. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Mount Pisgah sits in the towns of Winthrop and Wayne, in Kennebec County, Maine.1,2 The Maine Forest Service built a 60-foot steel tower with a 7-by-7-foot cab on the summit in 1949.3,2,1 The register describes it as an Aermotor tower.2

The Kennebec Land Trust says the tower was in use from 1949 to 1991, about four decades.1 A Forest Lookouts summary dates its decommissioning to 1992, so the two sources differ by a year.3

By August 2008 the Town of Winthrop owned the tower, which it managed jointly with the Kennebec Land Trust. The trust holds a conservation easement on the property.3,1 A 2012 entry in the same summary reports that vandals pulled a safety rail away from the cab's entry hole.3

Today the 94-acre tower property, owned by the town, sits inside the trust's 1,100-acre conservation area.1 A 0.7-mile Tower Trail climbs to the tower, which the trust describes as open to the public.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as standing.4

  1. Mt. Pisgah Conservation Area, Kennebec Land Trust, https://www.tklt.org/pisgah (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. Mount Pisgah Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/me/mount-pisgah-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. Mount Pisgah Fire Tower, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/mount-pisgah2.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  4. Maine Fire Lookout Towers, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/me/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

Photo of Mount Pisgah Fire Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.

Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, register numbers, agency, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.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: 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: height, 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, 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

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