Fire lookout · Itasca County, Minnesota
Day Lake
Itasca County, MN tower in the Chippewa National Forest, described by a 1934 survey and a 1947 recovery note; listed as gone, with no removal date or site description found.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone; no removal date or method found in the sources read
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 tower100-foot ladder tower with square cab, listed as AermotorThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Chippewa National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Itasca County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.49921, −93.64824
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-day-lake
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 3.8 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
- 1934 EventCoast and Geodetic Survey description refers to the fire tower; a Forest Service letter quoted in the survey records confirms it is the Day Lake towerSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
- 1947 Condition assessmentRecovery note describes the structure as about 100 ft high, steel angle iron with a wooden top about 10 ft squareSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
- 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.
Day Lake was a fire tower in Itasca County, Minnesota, in the Chippewa National Forest.1
A Coast and Geodetic Survey description from 1934 refers to the tower, and a letter from the Forest Service confirmed that it was the Day Lake tower.1 The survey point was at the center of the tower, about 19 miles north-northwest of Grand Rapids.1
A 1947 recovery note puts the height at roughly 100 feet. It describes steel angle iron with a wooden section on top, about 10 feet on a side.1 A Minnesota tower list gives the same height for a ladder tower with a square cab, lists it as an Aermotor, and calls it a CCC tower.2
The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.3
A roadside marker near Suomi describes the remains of the Day Lake CCC camp along Highway 38, including a concrete shower and an outdoor stone stairway and chimney.4 The marker does not mention the lookout.4 No source we read describes what remains of the lookout itself, or whether the site is open to the public.
- Day Lake - Forest Lookouts, centraluslookouts.weebly.com, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/day-lake.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- A-Z List of Towers (Minnesota fire tower list), Wikimedia Commons, 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). ↩
- Day Lake CCC Camp, Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=232032 (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: agency, ownership, 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, 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
- A-Z List of Towers (Minnesota fire tower list) (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- Day Lake CCC Camp (Historical Marker Database) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Day Lake (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.