FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lincoln County, New Mexico

Ruidoso Lookout

A 1940 Aermotor tower above Ruidoso, NM, once a wildland lookout, now a town fire-watch post; a ranger's own memoir places him here watching the Trinity test.

Closed

The site is closed to visitors. OpenStreetMap tags the structure access=no; no source found describing public visitation.

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?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Staffed during fire season (as of 1996)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower30-ft Aermotor steel tower with 14x14 ft wood cab and steel mesh catwalk; reported as a rare MI-25 model in the SouthwestThe design: Aermotor
Built of
Steel
Built
1940
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
6,893 ft (2,101 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service
Land
Federal land
Location
Lincoln County, New Mexico
Coordinates
33.33184, −105.66232
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-nm-ruidoso

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 3.0 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. 1940 Built30-ft Aermotor steel tower with 14x14 ft wood cab, per NHLR and the NRHP nomination; Living New Deal says the tower was 'most likely' a 1933 CCC project instead but defers to the nomination's 1940 date.Sources: nhlr.org, en.wikipedia.org, livingnewdeal.org
  2. No record between 1940 and 1988
  3. 1988 Listed on the National Register of Historic PlacesAdded to the National Register of Historic Places January 27, 1988 (ref. 87002485); also entered on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties March 4, 1988.Source: en.wikipedia.org
  4. 1996 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register November 26, 1996, nominated by David Johnson, Forest Archaeologist; register noted the tower was by then staffed by a town employee for urban/suburban fire detection rather than by the Forest Service.Source: nhlr.org
  5. 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.

A rare tower watching over a growing town

Ruidoso Lookout stands on a ridge in the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest, in Lincoln County, New Mexico.1 The U.S. Forest Service put it up in 1940: a 30-foot steel Aermotor tower carrying a 14-by-14-foot wooden cab, reached by a steel mesh catwalk.1,2 One source, Living New Deal, calls it "most likely" a Civilian Conservation Corps project built in 1933 under the New Deal, but notes that the National Register nomination form gives 1940 as the construction year — the date this record follows, since it's the more specific, document-backed figure.3

The tower's Aermotor model is unusual for the region. Living New Deal, which lists it as a type MI-25, says only one other example is known in the Southwest, on the Gila National Forest.3 The structure has not seen major changes since it went up and keeps its original materials and layout.3

One ranger's memoir ties the tower to a much bigger moment in history. Herbert Lee Traylor, who served here, wrote in his 1983 book Tales of the Sierra Blanca: Stories of Long Ago that he watched the first detonation of a nuclear device — the Manhattan Project's Trinity test — from the lookout.4 This record has no source for the claim beyond Traylor's own account, passed on through Wikipedia.

The tower was entered on the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 1988 (reference 87002485) and on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties the following March 4.2 It joined the National Historic Lookout Register later, on November 26, 1996, nominated by David Johnson, then the forest's archaeologist.1

By the time of that 1996 nomination, the register noted that the Town of Ruidoso had grown enough in the tower's first 56 years to "nearly surround" it, and that a town employee — not a Forest Service lookout — staffed it to watch for urban and suburban fires rather than wildland ones.1 Wikipedia describes that watch as still ongoing.2

The tower sits on Forest Service land. OpenStreetMap tags the structure as closed to public access, and nothing found here says otherwise, so it's one to admire from a distance rather than plan a climb to.5

  1. "Ruidoso Lookout," National Historic Lookout Register, nhlr.org, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nm/ruidoso-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  2. "Ruidoso Lookout Tower," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruidoso_Lookout_Tower (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  3. "Ruidoso Lookout, Lincoln National Forest, NM," Living New Deal, https://livingnewdeal.org/sites/ruidoso-lookout-lincoln-national-forest-nm/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  4. Herbert Lee Traylor, Tales of the Sierra Blanca: Stories of Long Ago (Pioneer Publishing Company, 1983), as cited in "Ruidoso Lookout Tower," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruidoso_Lookout_Tower (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  5. OpenStreetMap, node 357614877, https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/357614877 (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  6. "New Mexico Lookouts," Forest Fire Lookout Association, firelookout.org, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/nm/ (accessed 2026-10-04).

Photos

Photo of Ruidoso Lookout
Photo: 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, 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. Recreation Information Database (recreation.gov) Gave us: what it is built of, ownership, access, dates Data source: ridb.recreation.gov · Public data from the US government · retrieved 19 Oct 2026
  4. Forest Fire Lookout Association chapter reports Gave us: design, dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association, chapter and restoration-grant reports (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts only (dates, names, the kind of work done). Every note is our own wording and every event links to the FFLA report it comes from. Positions are copied from the NHLR, FFLOS and FFLA records. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. Wikidata -- US fire lookout towers (Q748998 and subclasses) Gave us: height, register numbers, links Wikidata · CC0 1.0 (Wikidata). Images keep their own Commons licence/credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  6. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  7. 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
  8. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, staffing, 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

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