FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Polk County, Wisconsin

Frederic Lookout Tower

Metal fire tower built 1934 on 130th St, Luck township, Polk County, WI; DNR staffed it as needed until at least 2000; standing, not demolished; access unknown.

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
Staffed during fire season (as of 2000)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerMetal tower; the state inventory names International Derrick and Equipment Company in its architect fieldThe design: IDECO
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
1,414 ft (431 m)
Agency
Unknown
Land
Unknown
Location
Polk County, Wisconsin
Coordinates
45.63615, −92.42371
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-wi-frederic

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 3.8 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. 1934 BuiltYear built 1934 per the Wisconsin architecture and history inventorySource: legacy.wisconsinhistory.org
  2. No record between 1934 and 2000
  3. 2000 StaffedStaffed as needed by the DNR during the spring fire season until at least 2000Source: legacy.wisconsinhistory.org
  4. No record between 2000 and 2017
  5. 2017 Condition assessmentSurveyed for the state inventory; recorded as not demolishedSource: legacy.wisconsinhistory.org
  6. 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.

The Frederic Tower stands on 130th Street in the township of Luck, in Polk County, Wisconsin.1 The state's architecture and history inventory dates it to 1934 and describes it as a metal observation and fire tower.1 The same record names International Derrick and Equipment Company in its architect field. We found no second source for who made the tower, so that name is the inventory's claim.1

OpenStreetMap records an elevation of 431 meters at the tower's point. That figure is an elevation, not a height, and we found no height figure for the tower itself.2

The inventory says the Department of Natural Resources manned the tower on an as-needed basis during spring fire season, at least until 2000.1 The sources we read do not name the people who worked there or the fires the tower helped to watch.

The inventory gives 2017 as its survey date and records that the tower has not been demolished.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Wisconsin list also shows it as standing.3 It is not on the National Register of Historic Places or the state register.1 A 2018 news story about the Gordon tower in Douglas County says that tower was taken out of service in 2015, along with every other tower the Wisconsin DNR ran.4 We did not find anything saying whether the Frederic tower was among them, and we found no newer condition report.

We found no public access information for the Frederic tower. The sources do not say who owns the land, and we found no record of an open visit or a rental. Anyone curious should ask the landowner before going near it, and should not climb the tower.

  1. Frederic Tower, Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, Wisconsin Historical Society, https://legacy.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Property/HI234016 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Frederic Lookout Tower, OpenStreetMap, https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/354529020 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Wisconsin Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/wi/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Citizens seek to save fire tower overlooking upper St. Croix River, St. Croix 360, https://www.stcroix360.com/2018/07/citizens-seek-to-save-fire-tower-overlooking-upper-st-croix-river/ (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. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: elevation, links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, 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.