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Fire lookout · Harris County, Texas

Spring Fire Tower (moved from Montana)

Also known as Spring Fire Tower

A 1930s Aermotor MC-39 cab retired from Forest Service duty in Montana in 1995, restored, and re-erected in 2023 as a park feature in Spring, Texas.

Visit & stay

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

Access

Open to the public. Stands in Cypress Creek Park, a Timber Lane Utility District park open to the public; whether the tower itself can be climbed is not documented in available sources.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Not staffed (as of 2026)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerAermotor MC-39The design: Aermotor MC-39
Built of
Not recorded
Built
2023
Height
Unknown
Elevation
113 ft (34 m)
Agency
Timber Lane Utility District
Land
Unknown
Location
Harris County, Texas
Coordinates
30.04205, −95.40447
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-tx-spring

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 2.6 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. 1995 AbandonedAermotor MC-39 cab decommissioned by the U.S. Forest Service in western Montana after about 60 years of serviceSource: nhlr.org
  2. No record between 1995 and 2023
  3. 2023 Built'Built' field on NHLR detail pageSource: NHLR register entry
  4. 2023 MovedRestored by Davanna LLC (Bloomingdale, NY) and reconstructed in Cypress Creek Park, Spring, TexasSource: nhlr.org
  5. 2026 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterAdded to the National Historic Lookout Register, January 2, 2026, as US 1811, TX 5Source: nhlr.org
  6. Date unknown MovedMoved from Montana to Spring.Source: FFLA
  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 4 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The tower standing in Cypress Creek Park, in the Houston suburb of Spring, is not a Texas tower at all by birth. It is an Aermotor MC-39 cab, a model the Aermotor company of Chicago built by the hundreds in the 1930s and shipped out to forests across the country.1 This one went to western Montana, where the U.S. Forest Service put it to work spotting smoke.1 It stayed on duty there for about sixty years before the Forest Service decommissioned it in 1995.1

That might have been the end of it, but the cab went next to Davanna LLC, a restoration shop in Bloomingdale, New York, which gave it new stairs and a new platform and refitted the cabin.1 In January 2023 the restored tower went back up, this time far from any national forest: in Cypress Creek Park in Spring, Texas, a 104-acre park run by the Timber Lane Utility District that also has lakes, fishing piers, and observation decks.2 The National Historic Lookout Register added it to its rolls on January 2, 2026, as US 1811, TX 5, nominated by Alfred Francis Gessel.1

The register lists the tower's elevation as 113 feet, 34 meters; it doesn't say whether that figure describes the site or the structure itself.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Texas list confirms it still stands, cross-referenced to the same registry number.3 Beyond that, little is recorded. Whether visitors can climb it isn't documented in what's available here; the park's own page nods to a "Fire Tower Flyer" without reproducing it.2

Spring Fire Tower is now a piece of Montana's working forest history re-planted as a park feature outside Houston — a lookout with no fire season to watch for anymore, but a clear line back to the woods it came from.

  1. Spring Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/tx/spring-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  2. Parks and Trails, Timber Lane Utility District, https://timberlaneud.com/parks-and-trails/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  3. Texas lookout list ("Spring (Relocated from MT)," Harris County), Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/tx/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩

Photos

Photo of Spring Fire Tower (moved from Montana)
Photo: Alfred Francis Gessel, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: location, county, elevation, 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. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, type, status, register numbers, dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, 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.