FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Saint Louis County, Minnesota

Cloquet Valley

State tower 105, built 1930 along County 4 south of Whiteface Reservoir (80 ft per catalog, about 85 ft per 1952 survey); removed; site today not described.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. County catalog marks it removed; no removal year found in readable sources

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 towerSteel Aermotor stairway lookout, 80 feet per county catalog, about 85 feet per 1952 surveyThe design: Aermotor
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
85 ft (25.9 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Minnesota Forest Service (state)
Land
Unknown
Location
Saint Louis County, Minnesota
Coordinates
47.25442, −92.13052
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mn-cloquet-valley

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 4.1 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. 1930 BuiltTower 105, an 80-foot Aermotor stairway lookout along County 4 just south of Whiteface ReservoirSource: upload.wikimedia.org
  2. No record between 1930 and 1952
  3. 1952 Condition assessmentCoast and Geodetic Survey station description: steel construction, about 85 feet high and 20 feet square at the baseSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
  4. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The state forest service put up tower number 105 in the Cloquet Valley in 1930.1 The county catalog describes it as an 80-foot Aermotor stairway lookout that stood along County 4, just south of Whiteface Reservoir.1

In 1952 the Coast and Geodetic Survey recorded the tower as steel construction, roughly 85 feet tall, with a base 20 feet on a side.2 The survey placed it about 33 miles north of Duluth.2 The catalog and the survey disagree on height, 80 feet against about 85 feet, so treat the figure as approximate.1,2

The state catalog marks the tower as removed.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the Cloquet Valley tower as gone.3

No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public may visit it.

  1. St. Louis County Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/St_Louis_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cloquet Valley - Forest Lookouts, centraluslookouts.weebly.com (quoting the 1952 Coast and Geodetic Survey station description), https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/cloquet-valley.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists 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
  2. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- central US (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: height, 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
  3. 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.