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Fire lookout · Hamilton County, New York

West Mountain

Hamilton County lookout from 1909, with a 47-foot steel tower from 1920; removed in the 1980s, and its parts rebuilt as an exhibit at the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The original tower came down. A tower rebuilt from its parts stands inside the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown.

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. The rebuilt tower is inside the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown; visitors enter the museum to climb it. No source we read describes the original mountain site today.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Climbing is inside the museum, not at the mountain site.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower47-foot Aermotor LS-40 steel tower (1920)The design: Aermotor LS-40
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1909
Height
47 ft (14.3 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
New York Conservation Commission
Land
Unknown
Location
Hamilton County, New York
Coordinates
43.85996, −74.70630
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ny-west-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. 1909 BuiltLookout established on a 12-foot tower at a cost of $1,064.44 (Forest Lookouts)Source: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1909 First staffedWilliam Wing Sanderson served as forest fire observer (Wikipedia)Source: en.wikipedia.org
  3. 1911 StaffedForest observer appointed for West Mountain, engaged in the fire season at $60 a monthSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1920 Replaced by a new structureConservation Commission replaced the original tower with a 47-foot Aermotor LS-40 steel towerSources: easternuslookouts.weebly.com, nhlr.org, en.wikipedia.org
  5. 1922 EventNew cabin for the observer's living quarters constructed (Forest Lookouts)Source: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  6. No record between 1922 and 1970
  7. 1970 ClosedFire lookout operations ceased at the end of the 1970 season because of aerial detectionSource: en.wikipedia.org
  8. 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.

Forest Lookouts lists the earliest West Mountain entry as July 1909, when a lookout on a 12-foot tower was set up at a cost of $1,064.44.1 Wikipedia describes an earlier 14-foot wooden signal tower, built for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1899, as the first structure on the mountain. The pages do not say whether that is the same tower.2 Wikipedia names William Wing Sanderson as the forest fire observer there in 1909.2

In July 1911, two forest observers were appointed, one of them for West Mountain. That observer was engaged only during the fire season, at $60 a month.1

Forest Lookouts dates a steel tower on the mountain to 1920.1 Wikipedia says the Conservation Commission built a 47-foot Aermotor LS-40 tower that year to replace the original, and Starr lists the same 47-foot tower.2,3 The observer's living quarters got a new cabin in 1922.1 Wikipedia ties the end of fire lookout operations, after the 1970 season, to aerial detection.2

The FFLA list now marks the West Mountain tower as gone.4 The register says the West and Kempshall Mountain towers came down in the 1980s and went into storage.5 Wikipedia says the tower was later removed.2

The register says the museum bought the tower parts in the 1990s and built one tower to display permanently.5 Starr says parts of both towers went into one tower re-erected at the Essex County Historical Society building in Elizabethtown.3 The register calls the host the Adirondack History Museum, while Wikipedia calls it the Essex County Historical Museum.5,2 Getting to the top means going inside the museum first.5 Nothing in the sources we read describes what remains on the mountain today.

  1. West Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/west-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. West Mountain (Hamilton County, New York), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Mountain_(Hamilton_County,_New_York) (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Fire Towers of New York list, Bill Starr, 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 lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Adirondack History Museum Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ny/adirondack-history-museum-fire-tower/ (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, 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.