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Fire lookout · Grant County, New Mexico

Signal Peak Lookout

1932 Aermotor MC-24 steel tower in the Gila National Forest, Grant County; cab replaced 1966; NHLR-registered 2022; reached by the Signal Peak Trail from NM 15.

Visit & stay

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

Access

Open to the public. Reached by a Forest Service trail with trailhead parking; the sources do not say whether the tower itself is open to climbing.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Signal Peak Trail from the trailhead on NM 15, about 16.5 miles north of Silver City
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot Aermotor MC-24 steel tower; the original cab was replaced in 1966 with a cab built to a Forest Service standard plan in the CL-100 to CL-106 seriesThe designs: CL-100, Aermotor MC-24
Built of
Steel
Built
1932
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
9,002 ft (2,744 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service, Gila National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Grant County, New Mexico
Coordinates
32.92453, −108.17998
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-nm-signal-peak

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. 1932 BuiltAermotor MC-24 steel tower erected in 1932Source: nhlr.org
  2. No record between 1932 and 1966
  3. 1966 AlteredOriginal cab replaced in 1966; replacement follows the CL-100 to CL-106 Forest Service standard plan seriesSource: nhlr.org
  4. No record between 1966 and 2022
  5. 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered May 22, 2022 as US 1587, NM 45; nominated by Mark GutzmanSource: nhlr.org
  6. 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.

Signal Peak Lookout stands on Signal Peak in the Gila National Forest, in Grant County, New Mexico, at about 9,000 feet.1,2 The register puts the 30-foot Aermotor MC-24 steel tower up in 1932.1

The register says the original cab was replaced in 1966. The replacement followed a Forest Service standard plan in the CL-100 to CL-106 series.1 It also says the supporting buildings went up in the 1960s.1

Mark Gutzman nominated the lookout. The register recorded it on May 22, 2022, as US 1587, NM 45.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's 2020 New Mexico report lists it among the Gila lookouts as a new register nomination.3

The association's New Mexico list shows the tower as standing.4 The sources I read do not say who has staffed it or what fires it has watched.

The Forest Service describes the Signal Peak Trail as a high-elevation hike through mixed conifer forest, leading up to a lookout tower.2 The trailhead is on New Mexico Highway 15, about 16.5 miles north of Silver City.2 The Forest Service page does not say whether the tower itself is open to climbing, so check with the Gila National Forest before going up it.2

  1. Signal Peak Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nm/signal-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. Signal Peak Trail #742, Gila National Forest, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r03/gila/recreation/trails/signal-peak-trail-742 (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. New Mexico Chapter 2020 Year-End Report, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/cr-nm-2020.pdf (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  4. New Mexico Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/nm/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

Photo from 1988 NRHP nomination "Lookouts of the Southwestern Region"
Photo from 1988 NRHP nomination "Lookouts of the Southwestern Region" (1988)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, 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, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. 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
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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

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