Fire lookout · Cass County, Minnesota
Emily Lookout Tower
68-ft Aermotor ladder tower; placed in 1928 or erected in 1929 (sources differ); listed as standing; no current condition, access or later staffing record found.
- Standing
- Access unknown
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Access unknown
We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower68-foot Aermotor ladder towerThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1928
- Height
- 68 ft (20.7 m)
- Elevation
- 1,424 ft (434 m)
- Agency
- Unknown
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Cass County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 46.68032, −93.93267
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-emily
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 4.0 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
- 1928 BuiltBrainerd Daily Dispatch item of 29 Dec 1928, quoted by Forest Lookouts, lists a 68-foot tower placed on a hill southeast of EmilySource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
- 1929 BuiltMinnesota fire lookout list gives the year erected as 1929Source: upload.wikimedia.org
- 1929 StaffedApril 1929 newspaper item says Mr. and Mrs. Taft Kirvan expected to move to Emily, where he would work as watchman in the fire towerSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
The Emily Lookout Tower stands 68 feet high and uses an Aermotor ladder design.1 A Minnesota fire lookout list locates it about 3.5 miles to the south of Emily.1
The build date is uncertain. The same list says it was erected in 1929.1 A December 1928 newspaper item, quoted on the Forest Lookouts site, lists among that year's permanent improvements a tower 68 feet tall, set up southeast of Emily on a hill.2 In April 1929 the same paper reported that Taft Kirvan and his wife expected to relocate to Emily, where he would take a job watching from the fire tower.2 We found no account of a fire the tower watched.
The sources also disagree on the county. Forest Lookouts and the Forest Fire Lookout Association both say Cass County,2,3 while the Minnesota list appears to place the tower in Crow Wing County.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as standing.3
We found no recent report on the tower's condition, public access or rental status. We could not confirm who controls the site, so ask before visiting, and do not climb it.
- Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers, A-Z list, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/A-Z_List-Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Emily, Forest Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/emily.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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
- 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: 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
- Wikidata -- US fire lookout towers (Q748998 and subclasses) (opens another site) Gave us: elevation, photos, links Wikidata · CC0 1.0 (Wikidata). Images keep their own Commons licence/credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, dates, photos, 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, A-Z list (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Emily (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- Wikidata item Q107505169 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.