FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Bernalillo County, New Mexico

Manzano Lookout

Open steel tower with an L-4 cab on Cibola NF land beside Kirtland AFB, built for the Department of Defense; construction date unknown; registered 2022.

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. Register notes Kirtland AFB lies just west; tDAR lists Forest Service land withdrawn to Kirtland and DOE nearby. No visitor rule in the sources read

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

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerappears to be a 30-foot K-brace open steel tower with an L-4 cab atop (Register's tentative description)The design: L-4
Built of
Steel
Built
Unknown
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
7,995 ft (2,437 m)
Agency
US Department of Defense
Land
Unknown
Location
Bernalillo County, New Mexico
Coordinates
34.96445, −106.39173
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-nm-manzano

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 2.8 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  1. 2002 EventSection 110 cultural survey of 6,000 acres of Forest Service lands withdrawn to Kirtland AFB and DOE in the Manzanita Mountains, fieldwork June to November 2002; the report is indexed under the keyword Manzano Lookout TowerSource: core.tdar.org
  2. No record between 2002 and 2022
  3. 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register as US 1652, NM 51 on July 7, 2022Source: nhlr.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 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Manzano Lookout stands in Bernalillo County, and the National Historic Lookout Register places it on Cibola National Forest land.1 The Register says it was built for the Department of Defense, and that Kirtland Air Force Base sits just west of it.1 The Register gives no construction date, and the sources read do not supply one.1

The Register's tentative description is a 30-foot open steel tower with K-brace framing and an L-4 cab at the top.1 It rates the structure in poor condition.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's New Mexico list shows the tower as standing.2

An archive record for a 2002 cultural survey of Forest Service land withdrawn to Kirtland and the Department of Energy carries the site-type keyword "Manzano Lookout Tower." The keyword ties the tower to that archaeology work, but the record gives no date for the tower.3

The Register listed the lookout on July 7, 2022, as US 1652, NM 51.1 The sources read say nothing about who staffed the tower, what fires it watched, or whether it was ever closed.

Today the tower is standing in poor condition, close to a military base.1,2 A 2003 archive record says Forest Service land in the Manzanita Mountains was withdrawn to Kirtland and the Department of Energy.3 The sources give no visitor rule for the lookout. Stay clear of military land, and do not climb a tower that is closed or unsafe. Check with the Cibola National Forest and Kirtland Air Force Base before any visit.1,3

  1. Manzano Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nm/manzano-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. New Mexico Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/nm/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. Manzano Lookout Tower (site-type record), tDAR (core.tdar.org), https://core.tdar.org/browse/site-type/4787/manzano-lookout-tower (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

Manzano Lookout -2009
Manzano Lookout -2009 (2009)Photo: Jack Shiver, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.

Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, register numbers, agency, 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, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. 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

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