Fire lookout · Blair County, Pennsylvania
Loop Tower
Steel lookout built 1922 on Tussey Mountain at Lytle's Knob (the Loop), 60 ft per 1922-24 notices; sources disagree on county; current condition not documented.
- Standing
- Access unknown
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Access unknown
We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towersteel tower, 60 ftThe design: Blaw-Knox
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1922
- Height
- 60 ft (18.3 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- State Game Lands 118
- Land
- State land
- Location
- Blair County, Pennsylvania
- Coordinates
- 40.49660, −78.13170
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-pa-loop
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 3.3 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
- 1922 BuiltSteel tower completed the week before a November 7, 1922 notice; 60 feet high on the Loop spur of Tussey Mountain at Lytle's KnobSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
- 1922 First staffedEugene Bradley newly appointed tower man; transferred from the Greenwood Fire TowerSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
The Loop tower was built on Tussey Mountain at Lytle's Knob, on a spur of the mountain that the sources call the Loop. The site is about 2,500 feet above sea level.1 The district forester, T. Roy Morton, chose it from three sites he suggested; the other two were Short Mountain and Canoe Mountain.1
A steel tower 60 feet high was finished in 1922. A notice dated November 7, 1922, says it had been completed the week before, and that Eugene Bradley had just been named its tower man.1 Bradley came over from the Greenwood Fire Tower, where he had been in charge for six months.1 A 1924 notice still describes the 60-foot tower when a Blair County chapter of the Pennsylvania Alpine Club planned to climb it.1
The sources disagree on the height. The Loop page on the same site says the tower was 78 feet tall, and it gives no source for that figure.2 The 1922 and 1924 notices both say 60 feet.1
The two Forest Lookouts pages also disagree on the county. One places the site in Huntingdon County and the other in Blair County.1,2 The state game lands along the ridge, State Game Lands 118, run through both counties.3
The sources do not say whether the tower still stands or whether its cab may be climbed, and none describes its condition. The game lands are open for general use year round.4 Treat the tower as off limits until you have checked with the land manager.
- Lytles Knob (Loop), Forest Lookouts (easternuslookouts.weebly.com), with 1922 and 1924 newspaper clippings, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/lytles-knob-loop.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- The Loop, Forest Lookouts (easternuslookouts.weebly.com), https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/the-loop.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Pennsylvania State Game Lands Number 118, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_Game_Lands_Number_118 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- State Game Lands 118 map, Pennsylvania Game Commission, https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/pgc/documents/habitat-management/sgl-maps-and-routes/sgl-maps/sgl_118.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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Sources
- Fire Towers of Pennsylvania (ArcGIS StoryMap, Shawn Lesitsky) (opens another site) Gave us: name, county, type, height, status, agency, ownership, dates, photos, links Pennsylvania fire towers StoryMap (ArcGIS) · No licence stated; facts only (county, agency, built year, height, builder). · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: location, 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, height, agency, 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
- Lytles Knob (Loop), with 1922 and 1924 newspaper clippings (Forest Lookouts (easternuslookouts.weebly.com)) (opens another site)
- Pennsylvania State Game Lands Number 118 (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- State Game Lands 118 map (Pennsylvania Game Commission) (opens another site)
- Fire Towers of Pennsylvania StoryMap (Shawn Lesitsky) (opens another site)
- The Loop (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.