Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. 10 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1903.
From the record
“The Blue Mountain Fire Observation Station is a historic fire observation station located on Blue Mountain at Indian Lake in Hamilton County, New York. The station includes a 35-foot-tall (11 m), steel frame lookout tower built in 1917, an observer's cabin built in 1975, the remains of three observer's cabins, remains of a radar station built in the 1960s, and remnants of telephone lines along the foot trail.”
Wikipedia article Blue Mountain Fire Observation Station, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 24 National Register listings published here for Hamilton County · listed in 2001 · category: Structure.
Also known as. Fire Observation Stations of New York State Forest Preserve MPS
Town. Indian Lake town
National Register reference number.01001035- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Then and now
1903 to 1997
The ground this property stands on, surveyed
94 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are
United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.
19031997
Fires near this property
22 since 2004
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 22 fires within 5 miles of Blue Mountain Fire Observation Station
between 2004 and 2020, burning about 6 acres in total. 9 started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Natural
9
Recreation and ceremony
7
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
2
Smoking
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Indian Lake, the town this property stands in, in 24 storm reports between 1993 and 2022: 15 thunderstorm wind, 6 hail, 2 flood, 1 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Severe thunderstorm winds downed trees and power lines during the late afternoon of August 31st. One of the trees fell on a van causing extensive damage.
Severe thunderstorm winds downed a large tree and powerlines along Cedar River Road near the Wakely golf course in the Town of Indian Lake on the afternoon of July 8th.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
