Fire lookout · Beltrami County, Minnesota
Buena Vista
Beltrami County, MN ladder tower dated 1931 (81 ft); surveyed in 1960 and marked removed; the Forest Fire Lookout Association index lists the site as gone.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. County survey marks the tower removed, with no removal date given; no source describes what remains at the site
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 tower81 ft ladder tower, Aermotor make; 1960 survey note gives overall height as 85 ftThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- 81 ft (24.7 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service (owner shown as Mn MFS in the Beltrami County survey)
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Beltrami County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.65010, −94.87746
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-buena-vista
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
- 1931 BuiltBeltrami County survey table gives the date as 1931Source: upload.wikimedia.org
- No record between 1931 and 1960
- 1960 Condition assessment1960 survey note describes a four-legged steel structure with a metal observation room, overall height 85 ftSources: upload.wikimedia.org, 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.
The Buena Vista lookout stood in Beltrami County, Minnesota. The county survey dates the tower to 1931.1 It was an 81-foot ladder tower of Aermotor make, and the Minnesota Forest Service owned it.1
A 1960 survey note describes a steel tower on four legs, topped by a metal observation room.2 That note gives the overall height as 85 feet, while the survey table lists 81 feet.1,2 We use the table figure in our records.
The county survey marks the tower as removed.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association index lists the site as gone.3
No source we read describes what remains at the site today.
- Beltrami County Fire Lookout Towers, Minnesota Forest Service survey, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Beltrami_County_Fire_Lookout_TowersTowers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- A-Z List of Minnesota Towers, Minnesota Forest Service survey, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/A-Z_List-Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, 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
- 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
- Beltrami County Fire Lookout Towers (Minnesota Forest Service survey (PDF, Wikimedia Commons)) (opens another site)
- A-Z List of Minnesota Towers (Minnesota Forest Service survey (PDF, Wikimedia Commons)) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota 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.