Fire lookout · Carlton County, Minnesota
Jay Cooke
100-foot steel stair tower, probably built by a CCC crew in 1937 near Jay Cooke State Park; county survey list marks it removed; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The county survey list marks the tower removed and firelookout.org lists it as gone. No source read describes the site now.
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. Tower site is along what is now Jay Cooke Road; the Forest Lookouts page files it under Jay Cooke State Park, a Minnesota state park. No source describes access to the former tower.
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower100-foot Aermotor stairway tower of steel with four legs (1952 survey note)The design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1937
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service (owner in the county survey list)
- Land
- State land
- Location
- Carlton County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 46.66673, −92.35356
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-jay-cooke
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 4.0 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
- 1937 BuiltCompleted by a May 1937 Big Lake Breeze item; county list says CCC Company 1760 likely built itSources: centraluslookouts.weebly.com, upload.wikimedia.org
- No record between 1937 and 1952
- 1952 Condition assessmentSurvey note describes the tower as about 115 feet, steel, four legs, and marks it removedSource: upload.wikimedia.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 Jay Cooke lookout was a 100-foot tower completed in 1937.1 A May 1937 item from the Big Lake Breeze, credited to CCC Company 1760 in Cloquet and reprinted on a Forest Lookouts page, says the tower was finished and now covered an area that lookouts had not previously watched.1 The county survey list names CCC Company 1760 as the probable builder and describes an Aermotor stairway tower, number 101.2
A 1952 survey note in the county list gives the height as roughly 115 feet, notes a steel, four-legged frame, and marks the tower removed.2 The 1937 item and the county's own entry say 100 feet, which conflicts with the 1952 figure.1,2
The firelookout.org listing marks the tower gone.3 No source read describes what, if anything, remains at the tower site today.
The county list places the tower alongside what is now Jay Cooke Road.2 The Forest Lookouts page files it under Jay Cooke State Park, which Wikipedia describes as a Minnesota state park that protects the lower reaches of the Saint Louis River.1,4
- Jay Cooke, Forest Lookouts (centraluslookouts.weebly.com), https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/jay-cooke.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Carlton County Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons (PDF survey list), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Carlton_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Jay Cooke State Park, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Cooke_State_Park (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
- 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, 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
- Carlton County Fire Lookout Towers (Wikimedia Commons (PDF survey list, Minnesota Forest Service)) (opens another site)
- Jay Cooke State Park (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Jay Cooke (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.