Fire lookout · Cook County, Minnesota
Hovland Lookout Tower
Cook County 80-foot Aermotor ladder lookout built in 1931 near Hovland and removed in summer 2017; the site now lies in a scientific and natural area in Grand Portage State Forest.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Removed in summer 2017; no tower remains, and the site is forest inside a scientific and natural area
Visit & stay
Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.
Access
Open to the public. Site lies inside Grand Portage State Forest, a state forest; no restriction is stated in the sources read
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower80-foot Aermotor ladder tower; a visitor's 2007 photo log describes an octagonal cabThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- 80 ft (24.4 m)
- Elevation
- 1,772 ft (540 m)
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service (now Minnesota DNR Forestry Division)
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Cook County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.87909, −89.99969
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-hovland
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 3.9 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
- 1931 BuiltAermotor 80-foot ladder tower, listed as Tower #120 in the Cook County surveySource: upload.wikimedia.org
- No record between 1931 and 2017
- 2017 RemovedRemoved in summer 2017Sources: upload.wikimedia.org, northshorevisitor.com
- TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.
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 Hovland lookout was an 80-foot ladder tower, erected in 1931 about three miles inland from the hamlet of Hovland in Cook County.1,2 A visitor's photo log called it a ladder tower with an octagonal cab.3
The spot is on a plateau that drops steeply on either side.4 A North Shore guide says that is why this site was chosen for a fire tower.4 A county survey lists the owner as the Minnesota Forest Service.1
A visit logged on May 5, 2007 found the tower not in good repair, and the writer was not sure it was original to the location.3
The tower was removed in the summer of 2017.4,1
Today the site lies inside a scientific and natural area that the Grand Portage State Forest encloses, and the old-growth northern hardwood forest is still there.4,5
The tower is gone, so there is nothing to climb.2,4
- Cook County Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Cook_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Hovland, Historical Minnesota Fire Towers (kjackson.us), https://tower.kjackson.us/Hovland.php (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Spring Beauty Northern Hardwoods Scientific and Natural Area, North Shore Visitor, https://northshorevisitor.com/things-todo/spring-beauty-northern-hardwoods-scientific-and-natural-area/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Grand Portage State Forest, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Portage_State_Forest (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
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
- 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, staffing, 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
- Cook County Fire Lookout Towers (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- Hovland (Historical Minnesota Fire Towers (kjackson.us)) (opens another site)
- Spring Beauty Northern Hardwoods Scientific and Natural Area (North Shore Visitor) (opens another site)
- Grand Portage State Forest (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Wikidata item Q107495046 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.