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Fire lookout · Lewis County, New York

Gomer Hill Fire Tower

CCC-built 1940 steel lookout in Lewis County, NY; staffed 1941 to 1988, closed 1989, still standing and closed to the public because it holds radio gear.

Closed

The site is closed to visitors. NHLR: the site is on public State Lands, but the tower is closed as it contains numerous pieces of radio equipment.

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?
No
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
NY lookout association page: visitors may go to the site, though without the tower there is no view.
Staffing
Not staffed (as of 1989)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower67 ft 6 in International Derrick steel lookout towerThe design: IDECO
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1940
Height
68 ft (20.6 m)
Elevation
2,108 ft (643 m)
Agency
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Land
Unknown
Location
Lewis County, New York
Coordinates
43.64714, −75.48194
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ny-gomer-hill

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 3.4 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 BuiltBuilt by CCC Camp S-122 of Boonville and placed on the summitSources: nhlr.org, nysffla.org, en.wikipedia.org
  2. 1941 First staffedReported 2 fires and 161 visitors in its first staffed yearSources: nysffla.org, en.wikipedia.org
  3. No record between 1941 and 1988
  4. 1988 Last staffedCeased operation at the end of the 1988 seasonSources: nysffla.org, en.wikipedia.org
  5. 1989 ClosedOfficially closed in early 1989 as DEC phased out such towers; the Register gives 1989 as the decommissioning yearSources: nhlr.org, nysffla.org
  6. No record between 1989 and 2022
  7. 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered December 23, 2022 as US 1697, NY 49Source: nhlr.org
  8. 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.

Gomer Hill's lookout is a 67-foot-6-inch International Derrick steel tower on a hill about four miles west of Turin, in Lewis County, New York.1,2 The Civilian Conservation Corps put it up in 1940, when its Boonville camp, S-122, built it.2,3

The National Historic Lookout Register and Wikipedia both give the height as 67 feet 6 inches.1,3 A 1942 Coast and Geodetic Survey station description, though, calls the tower roughly 80 feet high overall.4 This story uses the 67-foot figure because three sources repeat it.

The lookout was first manned in 1941; that year it logged two fires and 161 visitors.2,3 Operations ended with the 1988 season.2,3

The Department of Environmental Conservation officially closed it in early 1989, after concluding that towers had lost their effectiveness and were being phased out.2 The Register gives 1989 as the decommissioning year.1 The tower was left standing, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's New York list still marks it as standing.5 Wikipedia says the tower now supports antennas.3

The Register places the site on public State Lands, yet the tower is closed because it carries a lot of radio gear.1 A New York lookout association page says people may visit the site, but the view is gone without the tower.2 Nothing in these sources suggests the public may climb the tower, so treat it as closed.

  1. Gomer Hill Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ny/gomer-hill-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. Adirondack Fire Towers & Tug Hill Fire Towers, nysffla.org, https://nysffla.org/towers6.htm (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. Gomer Hill, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomer_Hill (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  4. Gomer Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/gomer-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  5. New York Fire Towers, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

2012 photo
2012 photo (2012)Photo: Laurie Rankin, 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, 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 -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: height, 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
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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

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