Fire lookout · Carlton County, Minnesota
Moose Lake
Carlton County MN Minnesota Forest Service stairway tower dated 1939; cab gone, frame still standing, now a fenced communications site.
- 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. Described as fenced and in communications use; no public visiting information found
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower80-foot McClintock Marshall Co. stairway towerThe design: McClintic-Marshall
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1939
- Height
- 80 ft (24.4 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service, now the Minnesota DNR Forestry Division
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Carlton County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 46.44752, −92.81004
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-moose-lake
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 3.7 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
- 1939 BuiltDated 1939 in the county listing, owner Minnesota Forest Service; the listing gives no construction storySource: upload.wikimedia.org
- 1952 Condition assessment1952 survey notes describe steel construction, four legs and about 120 feet highSource: 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 Carlton County listing of its fire towers dates the Moose Lake tower to 1939 and names the Minnesota Forest Service as its owner.1 It was an 80-foot stairway tower from the McClintock Marshall Co., and the county called it tower number 4.1 The listing places it along Tower Road, west of the town of Moose Lake.1
The same listing includes a 1952 survey note that describes the tower as steel, with four legs and about 120 feet high. That figure disagrees with the 80 feet given elsewhere in the listing, so we report 80 feet and flag the difference.1 We found no record of who staffed the tower or what fires it watched.
The county listing says the tower is now used for communications.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association still lists it as standing, but it adds an asterisk for towers whose cab is no longer in place.2 A visitor's photo page says the steel structure now holds communication gear, and that the stairway sits inside a fence.3
We found no public visiting information. Because the site is fenced and used for communications, treat it as closed to visitors, and ask the owners before going near it.
- Carlton County Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Carlton_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Moose Lake, kjackson.us, https://kjackson.us/towers/MooseLake.php (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
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
- 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 Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- Moose Lake (kjackson.us) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.