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Fire lookout · Cortland County, New York

Morgan Hill

Cortland County, NY tower on Morgan Hill near Truxton; built 1941 (Wikipedia says 1940), last lookout use 1970, removed by 1978; cabin moved to private land in 2025.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Removed; Wikipedia says removed in 1978 and the Starr list marks it removed. The former observer's cabin was moved to private land in 2025.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Wikipedia says much or all of the hill, including its summit, lies within Morgan Hill State Forest, but the sentence carries a citation-needed tag. No source read describes current access to the summit.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
No tower remains to climb; the tower was removed

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerInternational Derrick model 1937, 82 ft 6 in steel tower (Starr list)The design: IDECO
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1941
Height
82 ft (25.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
New York State Conservation Department / DEC (Starr list); built by CCC Camp S-103 of DeRuyter (Wikipedia)
Land
Unknown
Location
Cortland County, New York
Coordinates
42.76783, −75.99763
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ny-morgan-hill

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. 1941 BuiltStarr list gives opened and tower year 1941; July 1941 newspaper says nearly complete. Wikipedia gives 1940.Sources: easternuslookouts.weebly.com, nhlr.org
  2. No record between 1941 and 1970
  3. 1970 Last staffedCeased fire lookout operation at the end of 1970, per WikipediaSource: en.wikipedia.org
  4. 1978 RemovedTower later removed, per WikipediaSource: en.wikipedia.org
  5. No record between 1978 and 2025
  6. 2025 EventA chapter trip stopped at the former Morgan Hill and Georgetown tower sitesSource: nysffla.org
  7. 2025 MovedFormer observer's cabin moved onto D. Randall's private property with DEC assistance, for a planned museumSource: firelookout.org
  8. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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.

Morgan Hill is a hill north-northeast of Truxton in Cortland County, New York.1 Cortland County's first fire tower was nearly finished there in July 1941, a newspaper reported, with only the observer's shelter still to be built.2 Bill Starr's list gives 1941 as the year the tower opened and was built, and names an International Derrick model 1937 tower 82 feet 6 inches tall.3

Wikipedia gives an earlier date. It credits Civilian Conservation Corps crews with building the 82.5-foot tower on the hill in 1940.1 The two dates are a year apart. This account follows the 1941 newspaper and the Starr list.

Wikipedia says the tower gave up lookout work at the end of 1970, as aerial detection came into wider use, and that it was removed in 1978.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's New York list shows the tower as gone.4

In 2025 the former observer's cabin was moved onto the property of a private landowner, D. Randall, with help from the DEC.5 The chapter's annual report says the cabin was to be used as a fire tower museum, and that the agreement called for chapter members to staff it on a regular basis.5 The report expects plans to move the project forward to happen in 2026.5

In 2025 a chapter trip also stopped at two former tower sites, Morgan Hill and Georgetown.6

Wikipedia says much or all of the hill, including its summit, lies within Morgan Hill State Forest, but it tags that claim as needing a citation.1 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the summit today, or whether a visitor can reach it.

  1. Morgan Hill (New York), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Hill_(New_York) (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Morgan Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/morgan-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. The Fire Towers Operated by the NYS-DEC, Bill Starr list (March 2011), National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/media/2974/new_york_fire_tower_list_by_bill_starr_3-14-11.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. New York Fire Towers, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Forest Fire Lookout Association New York Chapter, annual report for 2025, https://firelookout.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/cr-ny-2025.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Forest Fire Lookout Association New York Chapter, July 2025 newsletter, https://www.nysffla.org/News2025/2025%20Jul%20final.pdf (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: 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. Forest Fire Lookout Association, New York State Chapter Gave us: dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association, New York State Chapter (nysffla.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 chapter newsletter it comes from. Positions are copied from the NHLR and FFLA records (the chapter publishes none). · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. Forest Fire Lookout Association chapter reports Gave us: 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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, 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

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