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Fire lookout · Cherry County, Nebraska

Valentine NWR - Pony Lake Lookout Tower

A 100-foot Aermotor steel tower raised by the CCC on Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the 1930s, still standing with its cab in place.

Visit & stay

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

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go. On a national wildlife refuge; no source found on public access or climbing.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerType MC-39 Aermotor steel tower, 100 ft highThe design: Aermotor MC-39
Built of
Steel
Built
Unknown
Height
100 ft (30.5 m)
Elevation
3,038 ft (926 m)
Agency
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Land
Federal land
Location
Cherry County, Nebraska
Coordinates
42.47149, −100.48822
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ne-valentine-nwr-pony-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 3.3 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. 2026 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register as US 1847, NE 5Source: nhlr.org
  2. 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 4 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The Pony Lake tower stands in the Sand Hills of Cherry County, on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge was created in 1935 by an executive order of President Franklin Roosevelt, after the Bureau of Biological Survey bought roughly 70,000 acres of lake country "as a breeding ground for migratory birds and other wildlife," working with the Nebraska Game Preserve and Fish Commission.1 By October of that year, Civilian Conservation Corps crews had arrived and begun work under the Biological Survey's direction; the agency also planned a network of canals and diversion structures to regulate water levels across the refuge's lakes.1 The following August, 150 Works Progress Administration workers were also on the refuge, building ninety miles of fence near Hackberry Lake to keep cattle out and mark where hunting was prohibited.1

It was this Depression-era workforce that put up the tower itself, a 100-foot steel structure of the Type MC-39 Aermotor design.1 The Bureau of Biological Survey that oversaw the refuge's construction became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1940, and the Service still administers both the refuge and the tower.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the structure, cataloged as Valentine NWR 2 – Pony Lake, as standing in Cherry County, with its cab still in place rather than reduced to a bare tower.2 It was added to the National Historic Lookout Register in August 2026 as US 1847, NE 5.1

No source consulted here says when fire-watch staffing began or ended, or whether the cab is open to visitors. As a working structure inside a national wildlife refuge, any visit would be governed by the refuge's own rules rather than by a lookout-specific access program, and climbing it should not be assumed to be permitted without checking with refuge staff first. For now, the Pony Lake tower is best known as a surviving piece of the CCC and WPA infrastructure that shaped the refuge in the 1930s, standing watch over the Sand Hills lake country it was built to protect.

  1. Valentine NWR - Pony Lake Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ne/valentine-nwr-pony-lake-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  2. Nebraska lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ne/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩

Photos

August 20, 2012
August 20, 2012 (2012)Photo: Ron Kemnow photo, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, register numbers, agency, ownership, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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

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