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Fire lookout · Herkimer County, New York

Fort Noble Mountain

30-ft wooden lookout built July 1910 on Fort Noble Mountain, replaced 1916 by a 50-ft steel tower; closed 1978 and later removed; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Lookout closed in 1978 and the tower was later removed; the sources read do not give a removal date

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower50-foot Aermotor LL25 steel tower (1916), which replaced a 30-foot wooden tower of 1910The design: Aermotor LL-25
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1910
Height
49 ft (15.0 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Forest, Fish and Game Commission (1910); Conservation Commission (from 1916)
Land
Unknown
Location
Herkimer County, New York
Coordinates
43.41059, −74.82382
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ny-fort-noble-mountain

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its 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.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and its recorded height.

Downloads about 3.8 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. 1910 BuiltJuly 1910: 30-foot wooden lookout tower built by the Forest, Fish and Game Commission; cost given as $300.56Sources: en.wikipedia.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1916 Replaced by a new structureConservation Commission replaced the 1910 tower with a 50-foot steel Aermotor LL25 towerSource: en.wikipedia.org
  3. 1918 AlteredWikipedia: wooden steps added inside the structure in 1918 or 1919Source: en.wikipedia.org
  4. 1930 AlteredEastern site: a self-supporting stairway replaced the original outside ladderSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1930 and 1945
  6. 1945 StaffedObserver Arch Blue named in a March 1945 newspaper item quoted by the Eastern siteSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  7. No record between 1945 and 1978
  8. 1978 ClosedWikipedia: the tower ceased fire lookout operations in 1978Source: en.wikipedia.org
  9. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Fort Noble Mountain sits in the Adirondacks, on the boundary between the towns of Ohio (Herkimer County) and Morehouse (Hamilton County).1

The Forest, Fish and Game Commission put up a 30-foot wooden lookout on the mountain in July 1910.1 The Eastern lookouts site gives its cost as $300.56.2 In 1916 the Conservation Commission put a 50-foot steel Aermotor LL25 tower in its place.1

The sources give two accounts of the stairs. Wikipedia says wooden steps were added inside the tower in 1918 or 1919.1 The Eastern site dates to 1930 a switch from the original outside ladder to a self-supporting stairway.2 These may be two different changes, so we report both.

A March 1945 newspaper item, quoted by the Eastern site, names Arch Blue as a fire observer on the mountain for the Conservation Department.2

Fire lookout work ended in 1978.1 The tower was later taken down, because it was no longer needed for fire detection and had been classed as a "non-conforming" structure in the Fort Noble Primitive Area.1 Wikipedia says that taking it down made it possible to reclassify the land as Wilderness.1 None of the sources we read gives a removal date. CNY Hiking lists the tower as removed,3 and the FFLA list marks it as "Tower Gone."4

The tower is gone.4 We found no source that describes the site today, including whether any of the footings remain or whether a trail reaches the summit.

  1. Fort Noble Mountain, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Noble_Mountain (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Fort Noble Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/fort-noble-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Fire Towers in New York State, CNY Hiking, https://www.cnyhiking.com/NYStateFireTowers.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. New York Fire Towers, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

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 -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: height, agency, links easternuslookouts.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, 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

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