Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Minnesota
LaSalle Lookout Tower
Clearwater County Aermotor ladder tower (Tower 68) erected 1931 in Mississippi Headwaters State Forest; county leases it for communications; FFLA lists standing.
- Standing
- Restricted access
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Restricted access
Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. Clearwater County leases the tower for communications (county list, undated). No public access information found.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- No public access information found; the county leases the tower for communications, so treat it as off limits.
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerAermotor ladder tower, 80 feetThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- 80 ft (24.4 m)
- Elevation
- 1,680 ft (512 m)
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service, now Minnesota DNR Forestry Division
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Clearwater County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.31567, −95.18863
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-lasalle
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
- 1931 BuiltErected in 1931 as Fire Tower 68. The Central US lookouts list and the Clearwater County text give an 80-foot Aermotor ladder tower; the county table gives 81 feet.Sources: centraluslookouts.weebly.com, upload.wikimedia.org
- 1941 Condition assessment1941 survey notes describe the tower as about 100 feet high, of steel construction, with an enclosed crow's nest. This conflicts with the 80-foot figure.Source: 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 LaSalle Lookout Tower stands in Clearwater County, Minnesota, in the Mississippi Headwaters State Forest.1,2,3
The Minnesota Forest Service owned the tower, which dates to 1931.2 The Central US lookouts list gives an 80-foot Aermotor tower with ladder access.1 The Clearwater County text also says 80 feet, though its table gives 81.2
The two lists do not agree on everything. A 1941 survey note quoted in the Clearwater County list says the tower was about 100 feet tall, of steel, with an enclosed crow's nest.2
We did not find the names of anyone who watched from the tower, or any particular fire it was used on.
The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as standing.4 The Clearwater County list says the county rents the tower out for communications, but gives no start date for that arrangement.2
We found no public access information. Because the tower is leased for communications, treat it as off limits and do not climb it.
- LaSalle, Forest Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/lasalle.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). ↩
- LaSalle Lookout Tower, Wikidata, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q107494585 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (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: what it is built of, design, 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)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- LaSALLE (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- Wikidata item Q107494585 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.