Fire lookout · Itasca County, Minnesota
Farley Hill Lookout Tower
Chippewa NF tower in Itasca County: 100-ft Aermotor ladder tower dated 1935 by one list (a 1934 survey already names it); no detection use since about 1972-73; listed standing.
- 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 tower100-foot Aermotor ladder towerThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1935
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 1,365 ft (416 m)
- Agency
- Chippewa National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Itasca County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.57314, −94.13080
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-farley-hill
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
- 1934 EventA Coast and Geodetic Survey station description from 1934 already refers to the Farley fire towerSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
- 1935 BuiltMinnesota fire lookout list gives the year erected as 1935Source: upload.wikimedia.org
- No record between 1935 and 1972
- 1972 EventForest Service phased out towers around 1972/73; the list says this tower is no longer used for detectionSource: upload.wikimedia.org
- 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 Farley Hill Lookout Tower stands on a wooded hill in Itasca County, inside the Chippewa National Forest, about 3.25 miles from Squaw Lake to the south.1
A Minnesota fire lookout list gives the design as an Aermotor ladder structure, 100 feet tall, erected in 1935.2 A 1934 Coast and Geodetic Survey station description, reproduced by Forest Lookouts, already refers to the center of the Farley fire tower.1 Either an earlier tower stood on the site, or one of the dates is wrong, and we could not tell which.1
The sources we read name no lookout who staffed the tower and no fire it watched.
The same list says it is no longer used for detection, a change that came as the Forest Service wound down its towers around 1972 or 1973.2 The list also counts it as one of just two lookouts still left in the Chippewa.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as standing.3
The 1934 description starts at the Cut Foot Sioux Inn, heads north on Highway 46, turns west onto a graded dirt road, reaches a lookout cabin, and then follows a trail east to the top of the hill.1 Those directions are more than ninety years old, so check current roads and trail conditions before you go. We found no current access rules or rental listing for the tower. Ask the Chippewa National Forest first, and do not climb a tower you have no permission to enter.
- Farley Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/farley-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- 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). ↩
- 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: 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
- 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, agency, 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)
- Farley Hill (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- Wikidata item Q107504352 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.