Fire lookout · Westchester County, New York
Spitzenberg Mountain
Stone fire observer shelter with cupola, built 1929 by the Westchester County Park Commission on Spitzenberg; FFLA lists stone ruins in a public county park.
- Ruins
- Open to the public
- Verified
Ruins: Only footings or remains are left. FFLA lists the site as stone ruins. No source describes when the shelter fell into ruin or what remains.
Visit & stay
Ruins: footings or remains only. There is no structure to climb or rent.
Access
Open to the public. Blue Mountain Reservation is a Westchester County park open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to dusk, year-round.
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- Park trails include hikes to the tops of Mt. Spitzenberg and Blue Mountain (county parks page).
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerStone shelter house with a cupola for a fire observer; main room planned 16 ft squareThe design: Cupola house
- Built of
- Stone
- Built
- 1929
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Westchester County Park Commission
- Land
- Tribal land
- Location
- Westchester County, New York
- Coordinates
- 41.25540, −73.90536
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ny-spitzenberg-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.
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
- 1926 EventBlue Mountain Reservation acquired (1,538-acre park now run by Westchester County Parks)Source: parks.westchestergov.com
- 1929 BuiltStone shelter house with cupola under construction on the summit in December 1929 for a fire observer; the paper reported it as being erected, not finishedSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
- TodayRuinsOnly footings or remains are 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Spitzenberg Mountain sits in Blue Mountain Reservation, near Peekskill in Westchester County.1,2 In December 1929 the Westchester County Park Commission was building a stone shelter house with a cupola on the summit, for a fire observer.1 The main room was to be 16 feet square, and the cupola was to have windows facing the four points of the compass.1
Trucks and tractors could bring materials along a rough road to within a few hundred feet of the summit, but the final stretch needed a stone boat winched up on steel cable.1 The paper said an observer would be on duty in dry spells, when fire danger was high.1
Blue Mountain Reservation, a 1,538-acre park, was acquired in 1926.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's New York list records the summit site as stone ruins.3 No source I found says when the shelter fell into ruin or what the ruins look like now.
Today the reservation is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to dusk, all year.2 Its trails reach the tops of Mt. Spitzenberg and Blue Mountain.2
- Spitzenberg Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Eastern US Lookouts), quoting the Scarsdale Inquirer, December 27, 1929, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/spitzenberg-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Blue Mountain Reservation, Westchester County Parks, https://parks.westchestergov.com/blue-mountain-reservation (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- New York Lookouts by County, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ny-co/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, what it is built of, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: type, agency, ownership, access, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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
- Blue Mountain Reservation (Westchester County Parks) (opens another site)
- New York Lookouts by County (Forest Fire Lookout Association) (opens another site)
- FFLA New York lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Spitzenberg Mountain (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.