Fire lookout · Cass County, Minnesota
Mud Lake
Minnesota Forest Service ladder tower built 1935 near Mud Lake, Cass County; removed after 1985. No source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Removed after 1985.
Visit & stay
Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.
Access
Access unknown
We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerFour-legged steel structure with an observation room at the top; Aermotor ladder towerThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1935
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service, now Minnesota DNR Forestry Division
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Cass County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.27588, −94.02471
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-mud-lake
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 4.1 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
- 1935 BuiltMud Lake lookout, a 100-foot Aermotor ladder tower about two miles northwest of the Mud Lake Guard Station.Sources: upload.wikimedia.org, upload.wikimedia.org
- No record between 1935 and 1959
- 1959 Condition assessmentSurvey notes: four-legged steel structure with an observation room at the top; overall height 115 feet.Sources: upload.wikimedia.org, upload.wikimedia.org
- No record between 1959 and 1985
- 1985 RemovedRemoved after 1985; no exact date given.Sources: upload.wikimedia.org, upload.wikimedia.org
- 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 Minnesota Forest Service built the Mud Lake lookout in 1935, about two miles northwest of the Mud Lake Guard Station.1,2 The guard station had an earlier lookout of its own.2 A tall white pine served first as a lookout, and then the state put up a three-post, round-cab tower there in the late 1910s.2 That tower sat roughly five miles east of Federal Dam and stayed in use until the 1935 tower went up.2
According to the county list, the 1935 tower was 100 feet tall, an Aermotor ladder design.1,2 The 1959 survey notes describe a steel frame on four legs with an observation room at the top, and put its overall height at 115 feet.1,2 The listing and the survey therefore disagree on height.1,2
The tower was removed after 1985, according to both lists.1,2
The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone and places the site at 47.27588, -94.02471.3 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, and none says whether the public can visit it.
- Cass County Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Cass_County_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- A-Z List of Minnesota Fire Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/A-Z_List-Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, 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
- Cass County Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- A-Z List of Minnesota Fire Towers (Wikimedia Commons) (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.