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Fire lookout · Herkimer County, New York

Woodhull Mountain Fire Tower

Herkimer County, NY: wood station tower 1911, Aermotor LL25 steel tower 1916, lookout service ended after 1970; still standing, cab closed to visitors.

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. Wikipedia says open to the public except the tower cab; no closure notice or current land-manager notice found in the pages read

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Not staffed (as of 1970)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerAermotor LL25 steel tower (1916); self-supporting staircase added 1936The design: Aermotor LL-25
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1911
Height
53 ft (16.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
NY DEC -- Black River Wild Forest
Land
State land
Location
Herkimer County, New York
Coordinates
43.62284, −74.96152
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ny-woodhull-mountain

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 3.5 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. 1911 BuiltWood fire lookout tower built by the Conservation Commission (Forest Lookouts: station established with a wood tower)Sources: en.wikipedia.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1916 BuiltAermotor LL25 steel tower; 50 ft per Wikipedia, 53 ft per Forest LookoutsSources: en.wikipedia.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1916 and 1936
  4. 1936 AlteredSelf-supporting staircase installed to replace the wood ladder added to the outsideSource: en.wikipedia.org
  5. No record between 1936 and 1970
  6. 1970 Last staffedCeased fire lookout operations at the end of the 1970 season as aerial detection increasedSource: en.wikipedia.org
  7. 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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Woodhull Mountain rises to 2,359 feet in the Adirondacks, in the Town of Webb, Herkimer County.1 The state Conservation Commission put a wooden fire lookout on its summit in September 1911.1,2 Five years later the Commission built a steel Aermotor LL25 tower on the peak.1,2 The sources disagree on its height. Wikipedia gives 50 feet and Forest Lookouts gives 53 feet. The record here uses the taller figure.1,2

Bill Starr's article on New York's steel tower models calls the LL-25 the earliest standard steel tower the state installed.3 Compared with the 1917 design, this tower was lighter and had no stairs; climbing it meant a galvanized steel rung ladder on the outside.1 In 1936 a self-supporting staircase, tied to the original tower, replaced the wood ladder on the outside.1

Neither Wikipedia nor the Forest Lookouts page names a lookout who worked this tower or a fire it watched.1,2 A December 1939 newspaper report, reprinted by Forest Lookouts, mentions the tower only in passing.2 It describes a length of telephone wire, cut in the woods, that linked a paper company's office with its camps and "the tower at Woodhull Mountain," and it follows the trooper's investigation of the cut.2

The tower stopped working as a fire lookout at the end of the 1970 season, as aerial detection increased.1 It still stands, according to Wikipedia and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's New York list.1,4

According to Wikipedia, members of the public can still visit the structure, but the cab is excluded.1 We found no closure notice, but we also found no current notice from a land manager about access or conditions. Check before you go, and stay out of the cab.

  1. Woodhull Mountain (Herkimer County, New York), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodhull_Mountain_(Herkimer_County,_New_York) (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Woodhull Mountain, FOREST LOOKOUTS, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/woodhull-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. The Five Various Steel Fire Tower Models Utilized in New York State, Bill Starr, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/media/2973/new_york_steel_fire_tower_models_by_bill_starr.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. New York lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/ny/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

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. Map and Coordinates List for NYS DEC Firetowers (Andy Arthur) Gave us: agency, ownership, links Andy Arthur, andyarthur.org (CC BY 3.0) · CC BY 3.0, credit: Andy Arthur, andyarthur.org. Facts + short description text reused under that licence. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: what it is built of, design, 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, status, access, staffing, 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.