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Fire lookout · Union County, Pennsylvania

Sand Mountain Fire Tower

Also known as Sand Mountain Tower Site (Union County II)

A 1917 state fire tower on Sand Mountain in Union County, replaced in 1950 by an 80-ft Aermotor moved from Hartley; registered but in poor condition, access prohibited in 2022.

Closed

The site is closed to visitors. 2022 visit report says access to the tower is prohibited; a large communications tower stands next to the site

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Closed. See the warning at the top of this page.

Can you climb it?
No
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Access to the tower is prohibited according to the June 2022 visit report
Staffing
Not staffed (as of 2022-06-04)

Facts

Status
Standing sources disagree
Type
Cab on a tower80-ft Aermotor moved in from Eastville (Hartley) in 1950; it replaced an original 60-ft steel Aermotor of 1917The design: Aermotor
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Height
80 ft (24.4 m)
Elevation
2,070 ft (631 m)
Agency
Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry
Land
State land
Location
Union County, Pennsylvania
Coordinates
41.00184, −77.13148
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-pa-sand-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. 1917 BuiltSteel Aermotor observation tower erected August and September 1917 on Sand Mountain, bought from the Aermotor Company of Chicago; a line about four miles long was built from the Forest House to the tower in 1918Sources: nhlr.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1917 and 1938
  3. 1938 EventSteel Aermotor tower first built at the Hartley (Eastville) site in Union County; later moved to Sand MountainSource: firetower.org
  4. 1950 Built'Built' field on NHLR detail pageSource: NHLR register entry
  5. 1950 Replaced by a new structureOriginal 1917 tower replaced by an 80-ft Aermotor moved in from Eastville (Hartley); the Union County II site entry gives 1951Sources: nhlr.org, firetower.org, firetower.org
  6. No record between 1950 and 2008
  7. 2008 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered September 16, 2008 as US 467, PA 296 (Sand Mountain Tower Site, Union County II)Source: firetower.org
  8. 2017 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered December 6, 2017 as US 1253, PA 22Source: nhlr.org
  9. 2022 EventJune 4, 2022 visit report: very poor condition, unstaffed, access prohibited, district awaiting funding to remove the towerSource: nhlr.org
  10. 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 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The Sand Mountain Fire Tower stands on Sand Mountain in Union County, Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry administers it today.1 The first tower went up in 1917. The state Department of Forestry bought a steel observation tower from the Aermotor Company of Chicago and had it erected that August and September.2 Officials called it the first of a planned series of about a hundred towers across the state's forests, and a line about four miles long was built from the Forest House to the tower in 1918.2

Sources disagree on that first tower's height. A 1917 contract described a sixty-three-foot tower, while a report from the same year gave sixty feet, and the register also lists a 60-foot Aermotor.1,2

In its early years the lookout was staffed. A state publication, Forest Leaves, covering 1919 to 1922, says an observer stayed on the tower day and night through the dangerous fire season.2 None of the sources I checked credit the tower with a specific fire.

The 1917 tower was replaced in 1950 by an 80-foot Aermotor that had first been built at Eastville, also called Hartley, in 1938 and then moved to this ridge.1,3 The Former Fire Lookout Sites register gives 1951 for the replacement, so the two sources differ by a year.4 The National Historic Lookout Register added the tower on December 6, 2017, as US 1253, PA 22.1

A visit report dated June 4, 2022, found the tower in very bad shape. Its plexiglass had all been broken out, the door was gone, and several of the bottom flights of stairs had been torn away.1 A large communications tower sits beside it.1 The same report says access to the tower is prohibited, that the tower was unstaffed, and that the district was waiting for funding to remove it.1 Treat it as closed, and do not climb the structure.

  1. Sand Mountain Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/pa/sand-mountain-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. Sand Mountain, Forest Lookouts (easternuslookouts.weebly.com), https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/sand-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. Hartley Tower Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://www.firetower.org/lookouts/us/pa/hartley-tower-site/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  4. Sand Mountain Tower Site (Union County II), Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/pa/sand-mountain-tower-site-union-county-ii/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

Photo of Sand Mountain Fire Tower
Photo: Ron Stafford, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Sand Mountain
Sand MountainPhoto: Shawn Lesitsky -- PA Fire Towers StoryMap (Esri ArcGIS StoryMaps) · source

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Where sources disagree

We show disagreements between sources instead of quietly picking one. If you know which is right, please tell us.

  • Sources disagree on whether it still stands.

    • NHLR: Standing
    • FFLOS: Gone
    • Fire Towers of Pennsylvania (ArcGIS StoryMap, Shawn Lesitsky): Standing
    • FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com): Gone

    NHLR lists lookouts that were standing when registered.

  • Sources disagree on the year it was built.

    • NHLR: 1950
    • Fire Towers of Pennsylvania (ArcGIS StoryMap, Shawn Lesitsky): 1917

    Sources give different build years. Often one counts the first lookout on the site and another the structure there now.

Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, type, status, register numbers, agency, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: register numbers, dates, links Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. Fire Towers of Pennsylvania (ArcGIS StoryMap, Shawn Lesitsky) Gave us: what it is built of, design, height, photos, links Pennsylvania fire towers StoryMap (ArcGIS) · No licence stated; facts only (county, agency, built year, height, builder). · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: ownership, 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
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, agency, access, staffing, 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.