Fire lookout · St. Lawrence County, New York
Wilson Hill WMA #2
Platform in Wilson Hill WMA that the Forest Lookouts list says was built from parts of the Whites Hill tower; no second source found for that reuse.
- Standing
- Restricted access
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Restricted access
Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. On a state wildlife management area. Public use zones are open all year, but entry restrictions apply, and no source places this platform in a public use zone.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Open platform tower
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Unknown
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- St. Lawrence County, New York
- Coordinates
- 44.93140, −75.02480
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ny-wilson-hill-wma-2
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 3.8 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
No dated events recorded yet: nobody has recorded when this lookout was built.
- Date unknown MovedBuilt with parts of the Whites Hill tower, per the Forest Lookouts list. No year given.Source: firelookout.org
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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Wilson Hill WMA #2 is another platform the Forest Lookouts list records under the Wilson Hill name. The list says it stands in St. Lawrence County and was built with parts of the Whites Hill tower.1 No other source we read mentions that reuse.
The tower those parts came from stood on Whites Hill, a 1,427-foot mountain near Parishville.2 The Conservation Department built an 80-foot Aermotor LS40 steel lookout there in 1950.2 The state list says it entered service in 1951, when it logged 3 fires and 588 visitors.3 With aerial detection in use, the tower closed at the end of the 1971 season and was later removed.3,2 Its cabin went to the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Trout Lake Shop, where operations staff use it.2
Wilson Hill is a 4,000-acre state wildlife management area. The area is an open water wetland next to the St. Lawrence River.4 The public use zones stay open all year, but special entry and permit restrictions apply, and hunters must register on days the area is open to hunting.4
We found no description of the platform's condition or staffing, and no account of whether visitors can reach it. Ask DEC's Region 6 office in Watertown before you visit.4
- New York lookout list, St. Lawrence County entries, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ny-st/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Whites Hill (New York), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whites_Hill_(New_York) (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Searchable list of NY Fire Towers, New York State Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.nysffla.org/alphalist.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Wilson Hill Wildlife Management Area, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, https://dec.ny.gov/places/wilson-hill-wildlife-management-area (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, access, 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
- Searchable list of NY Fire Towers (New York State Forest Fire Lookout Association) (opens another site)
- Whites Hill (New York) (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- New York lookout list, St. Lawrence County entries (Forest Fire Lookout Association) (opens another site)
- Wilson Hill Wildlife Management Area (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation) (opens another site)
- FFLA New York lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.