Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Minnesota
Height of Land Lookout Tower
Clearwater County steel CCC fire lookout in White Earth State Forest; lists disagree on 1934 vs 1935 and 80 vs 86 ft; listed as standing; ladder starts high.
- Standing
- Open to the public
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Open to the public. A visitor's account: a forest track appeared to reach the summit area, and the ladder starts high above the ground. No access rule found.
- Can you climb it?
- No
- Road to the top?
- Yes, you can drive up
- Trail
- Visitor's account: a forest track appeared to reach the summit area. The visitor parked on a small road and went the last part on foot.
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerSteel tower with exterior ladder; Clearwater County list gives an International Derrick design with a square cabThe design: IDECO
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 80 ft (24.4 m)
- Elevation
- 2,005 ft (611 m)
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service, now Minnesota DNR Forestry Division
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Clearwater County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.23182, −95.50349
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-height-of-land
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 4.1 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
- 1934 BuiltBuilt by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Central US lookouts gives 1934 and 80 feet; the Clearwater County list gives 1935 and 86 feet. Not settled.Sources: centraluslookouts.weebly.com, 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 Height of Land tower is a steel fire lookout in Clearwater County, Minnesota, on forest land in the White Earth State Forest.1,2 The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built it in the mid-1930s. The two lists we read do not agree on the details. The Central US lookouts list gives 1934 and a height of 80 feet, with an exterior ladder.1 The Clearwater County list gives 1935, a height of 86 feet, an International Derrick design and a square cab.2 We could not settle which figures are right.
We found no names of anyone who watched from the tower, and no particular fire it was used on.
The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as standing, with no register number beside it.3 We found no report that it was moved, burned or taken down.
A visitor who wrote about the summit for P600 parked on a small road and then hurried on foot to the summit area, where the tower was standing.4 The writer said a forest track appeared to reach the summit, but its ladder starts high above the ground, so the writer did not consider climbing practical.4 We found no published rule on public access. Treat the tower as something to see from the ground, and check with the Minnesota DNR before going near it.
- Height of Land, Forest Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/height-of-land.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Clearwater County Fire Lookout Towers (PDF), Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Clearwater_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- A mosquito sprint to Height of Land Lookout, P600, https://p600.org/articles/a-mosquito-sprint-to-height-of-land-lookout (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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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, agency, 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, access, visiting details, 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
- Clearwater County Fire Lookout Towers (PDF) (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- A mosquito sprint to Height of Land Lookout (P600) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Height OF Land (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- Wikidata item Q107506910 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.