Fire lookout · Saint Louis County, Minnesota
Argus
St. Louis County stairway lookout moved from Budd Hill in Lake County; the booklets differ by a year on the move, and it is listed as gone.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone by the Forest Fire Lookout Association.
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
- Type
- Cab on a towerStairway tower by McClintock Marshall Co.The design: McClintic-Marshall
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 79 ft (24.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Unknown
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Saint Louis County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 46.81059, −92.41987
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-argus
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 4.4 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
- 1958 MovedLake County booklet says the Budd Hill tower was moved to the Argus site in 1958.Source: upload.wikimedia.org
- 1959 EventSt. Louis County booklet gives 1959 as the date for the Argus tower.Source: upload.wikimedia.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.
Argus was a stairway lookout in St. Louis County, Minnesota.1 The county booklet records it as a McClintock Marshall Co. tower about 79.5 feet tall, and says the name comes from Argus Panoptes, the many-eyed giant of Greek myth.1
The tower was first the Budd Hill lookout in Lake County.2 The Lake County booklet says the 80-foot stairway tower, numbered 106, was moved to the Argus site in 1958.2 The St. Louis County booklet describes Argus as the relocated Budd Hill tower from Lake County, but gives 1959 as its date, so the two booklets differ by a year.1
The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Minnesota list marks the Argus tower as gone.3
No source I read describes the Argus site today.1,2,3
- Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers: St. Louis County, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/St_Louis_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers: Lake County, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Lake_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- central US (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: links centraluslookouts.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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, 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
- Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers: St. Louis County (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers: Lake County (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Argus (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.