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Fire lookout · Cass County, Minnesota

Longville

Cass County, MN tower in Foot Hills State Forest: 81-ft Aermotor built 1929 (a survey says 1925); staffed 1937 and 1940; cab gone, still standing behind Longville's city garage.

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. Site lies behind the Longville city garage and has radio equipment at its base; no public visit route is described in the sources

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
No route or visit rules described; ask the town before going to the site
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower81-foot Aermotor steel ladder tower (cab removed)The design: Aermotor
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1929
Height
81 ft (24.7 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Mn MFS (state forest service), per the Cass County survey
Land
State land
Location
Cass County, Minnesota
Coordinates
46.97353, −94.20650
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mn-longville

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 3.8 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

  1. 1929 BuiltLookout history gives 1929 for the 81-foot Aermotor steel tower; the Cass County survey says the extant tower was erected in 1925Sources: centraluslookouts.weebly.com, upload.wikimedia.org
  2. 1937 StaffedBrainerd Daily Dispatch item (April 24, 1937), as quoted: Harry McKeebe to have charge of the tower that summerSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1939 EventCounty board (Pine River Journal item, February 24, 1939, as quoted) authorized the Division of Forestry to build a telephone line that would connect to the Minnesota forest service telephone line running into the Longville Lookout stationSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1940 StaffedBrainerd Daily Dispatch item, as quoted (dated October 3, 1940): Harry McKeebe started work at the towerSource: centraluslookouts.weebly.com
  5. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Longville's fire tower stands in Cass County, Minnesota, in the Foot Hills State Forest.1 The sources do not agree on when it went up. A local lookout history dates it to 1929 and describes a steel Aermotor tower, 81 feet high, with a ladder for access.1 A county survey of the towers says the tower standing today was erected in 1925, and that an earlier open-cab tower may have stood on the site first.2 The same survey is less sure that the tower was an Aermotor.2 The survey lists the owner as Mn MFS.2

Newspaper items quoted on the lookout history page show a man assigned to the tower in 1937 and again in 1940.1 In April 1937 the Brainerd Daily Dispatch reported that Harry McKeebe would have charge of the tower that summer.1 In October 1940 the same paper reported that he had started work there, because the woods were dry and full of duck hunters.1 In February 1939 the county board also authorized the state Division of Forestry to build a telephone line that would connect to the forest service line running into the Longville lookout station.1 The sources we read do not name any notable fire the tower watched.

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as Standing*, a starred label its legend uses for towers that keep their structure but have lost the cab.3 The county survey reports that the cab no longer exists and that antennas are mounted on the framing.2 The kjackson.us tower page also reports that the cab is absent and that the tower carries many antennas.4

That same page places the tower behind the city garage in Longville, with radio equipment at its base.4 We did not find a public visit route, so treat the site as restricted. Please ask the town before going near it, and do not climb the structure.

  1. Longville - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/longville1.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Cass County Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Cass_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Longville, Historical Minnesota Fire Towers, kjackson.us, http://kjackson.us/towers/Longville.php (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists 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
  2. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- central US (centraluslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: what it is built of, design, height, 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
  3. 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.