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Fire lookout · Perry County, Pennsylvania

Shermans Mountain Tower Site II

Also known as Shermans Mountain

Perry County steel Blaw-Knox lookout built 1923; register dates removal to 1977, a 1975 notice offered it for removal. A visitor's post describes a hike to the spot.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Removed; the register dates it to 1977 and a 1975 notice offered it for removal. No source describes the site now.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go. On Tuscarora State Forest land; a visitor's undated post describes a trail hike to the site. No source states public access or gives visiting rules for the site itself.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
A visitor's post describes about 1.2 miles each way on a trail to the site

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerSteel Blaw-Knox tower, per the registerThe design: Blaw-Knox
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1923
Height
60 ft (18.3 m)
Elevation
2,191 ft (668 m)
Agency
Tuscarora State Forest
Land
State land
Location
Perry County, Pennsylvania
Coordinates
40.22508, −77.57943
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-pa-shermans-mountain-tower-site-ii

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 3.5 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. 1923 BuiltBlaw-Knox steel tower; April 1923 items report it going up, then completed at sixty feetSources: firetower.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1923 and 1975
  3. 1975 EventState Department of Environmental Resources offered the tower for sale for removal in an August 26, 1975 notice; bid forms were to be requested from the district forester before Sept. 17, 1975Source: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1977 RemovedRemoval year given by the registerSource: firetower.org
  5. No record between 1977 and 2008
  6. 2008 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered on the Former Fire Lookout Sites registerSource: firetower.org
  7. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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.

The state register dates this steel Blaw-Knox tower to 1923 and gives its removal as 1977 1. An April 1923 newspaper item reported that the state was putting up a tower on Sherman's Mountain, roughly eleven and a half miles southwest of Blain 2. The next day another paper reported that a sixty-foot tower had been completed by the State Forestry Department 2.

The Forest Lookouts page also lists two outlooks from a 1908-09 entry, built in May, one of them on Sherman's Mountain and forty-five feet high 2. The register lists a separate Site I, a tree tower built in 1909 that is no longer standing 3, so those earlier outlooks seem to belong to that entry rather than to this one.

A notice dated August 1933 said the department would erect a fire tower on the mountain that year 2. The page does not reconcile that with the 1923 date 2.

In August 1975 the state Department of Environmental Resources offered the Shermans Mountain Fire Tower, in Toboyne Township, for sale for removal, and buyers were to request bid forms from the district forester before September 17 2. The register's 1977 removal date does not match that notice 1,2.

No source I found describes what remains at the site. A visitor's undated Flickr post describes a hike of about 1.2 miles each way to the spot and calls it the site of a geocache, but the post does not describe any structure there 4. A TopoQuest listing still marks a "tower" at the register's coordinates, which reads as a map label rather than a report on the site 5. The land is part of Tuscarora State Forest 2. I could not find rules for visiting the site itself, although a visitor did hike to it 4.

  1. Shermans Mountain Tower Site II, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/pa/shermans-mountain-tower-site-ii/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Sherman's Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/shermans-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Shermans Mountain Tower Site I, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/pa/shermans-mountain-tower-site-i/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Shermans Mountain Tower, Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/shermansmountainfiretower/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Shermans Tower, PA, TopoQuest, https://topoquest.com/place/pennsylvania/tower/shermans-tower/1212658 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, status, 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
  2. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: type, agency, 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
  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.