FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Itasca County, Minnesota

Scenic

1934 stairway tower in Scenic State Park, Itasca County, MN: 100 ft in the text, 86 in the A-Z table; listed standing and not open for climbing.

Closed

The site is closed to visitors. Not open for climbing per the A-Z list; the Fire Tower Trail leads to it

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Closed. See the warning at the top of this page.

Can you climb it?
No
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Fire Tower Trail leads to the tower (A-Z list)
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower100-foot steel stairway tower, International Derrick design (A-Z list)The design: IDECO
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
100 ft (30.5 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Scenic State Park, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Land
State land
Location
Itasca County, Minnesota
Coordinates
47.73353, −93.56785
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mn-scenic

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

  1. 1934 BuiltErected by a nearby CCC forestry camp (A-Z list); Central US page gives 100-foot steel tower erected 1934Sources: centraluslookouts.weebly.com, upload.wikimedia.org
  2. No record between 1934 and 2019
  3. 2019 Condition assessmentA study of the tower's historical significance was conducted (A-Z list)Source: upload.wikimedia.org
  4. 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.

Scenic's tower went up in 1934. It is a 100-foot steel stairway tower in Scenic State Park, in Itasca County, Minnesota.1,2 The A-Z list describes its design as an International Derrick stairway tower and says a nearby CCC forestry camp erected it that year.2 We found no account of why it was placed where it stands, and no record of the crew beyond that camp.

The park also has a CCC-era service yard on the western shore of Sandwick Lake, with buildings dated 1934 and 1935.3

The sources do not agree on the height. The Central US page and the A-Z text both say 100 feet, but the A-Z table's height column reads 86.1,2

In the sources we could read, we found no record of who staffed the tower or which fires it watched.

The A-Z list says a study of the tower's historical significance was carried out in 2019.2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as standing.4

The A-Z list says the tower is not open for climbing, although the Fire Tower Trail leads to it.2 If you visit, stay on the trail, do not climb, and ask park staff about the tower before you go.

  1. Scenic - Forest Lookouts, Central US Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/scenic.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. A-Z List of Minnesota Fire Lookouts, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/A-Z_List-Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Scenic State Park, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenic_State_Park (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (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: 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.