Fire lookout · Hubbard County, Minnesota
Farris
Gone Hubbard County tower: the Steamboat Hill lookout moved to Farris and erected in 1952. A 1959 survey gives a different height; no source dates its removal.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The Fire Lookout Association lists the Farris tower as Tower Gone; no date or method is given
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 Aermotor stairway towerThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Hubbard County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.36639, −94.70202
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-farris
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 4.3 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
- 1952 MovedSteamboat Hill lookout (tower 59) moved to and erected at the Farris siteSource: upload.wikimedia.org
- 1959 Condition assessmentSurvey note: four-legged steel structure with a metal observation room, overall height 110 feetSource: upload.wikimedia.org
- Date unknown RemovedFire Lookout Association lists the Farris tower as Tower Gone; no date or method givenSource: firelookout.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 Farris lookout started life at another site. The Hubbard County tower list says it was the Steamboat Hill lookout, moved to Farris and erected there in 1952.1 It was a 100-foot Aermotor stairway tower, and it kept the number 59 it had carried at Steamboat.1
Farris, once called Graceland, was a rail village in northeast Hubbard County, west of Cass Lake.1 A 1959 survey note describes a four-legged steel structure with a metal observation room, and it gives an overall height of 110 feet.1 The table entry says 100 feet, so the two figures disagree.1
The same list says the Steamboat tower had apparently been dismantled.1 The Fire Lookout Association's Minnesota list marks both the Farris and the Steamboat sites as gone.2
I did not find a source that describes the Farris site today. I cannot say what, if anything, is left there or whether the land is open to the public, so check with the local land manager before going to look.
- Hubbard County Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Hubbard_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, 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
- Hubbard County Fire Lookout Towers (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.