Dickinson Hill Fire Tower

Built in 1924. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. 12 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1897.

From the record

“Dickinson Hill Fire Tower is a historic fire observation station located at Grafton, Rensselaer County, New York. The 60-foot-tall (18 m), steel frame lookout tower is a prefabricated structure built by the Aermotor Corporation in 1924.”
Wikipedia article Dickinson Hill Fire Tower, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 128 National Register listings published here for Rensselaer County · listed in 2011 · category: Structure · built in 1924.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Fire Tower Rd., Grafton, 12138
When was it listed? May 2011
Category. structure
Town. Grafton town
When was it built? 1924
National Register reference number. 11000253 - 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.

Fires near this property

87 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 87 fires within 5 miles of Dickinson Hill Fire Tower between 1997 and 2020, burning about 93 acres in total. 11 started naturally. 12 were 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	31
Equipment and vehicle use	13
Arson/incendiarism	12
Natural	11
Debris and open burning	11
Power generation/transmission/distribution	4
Smoking	3
Recreation and ceremony	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
18 September 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	NA
17 September 2016	Natural	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	N/A
16 September 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	N/A
31 August 2001	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	New York Forest Rangers	not named
31 August 2001	Recreation and ceremony	1.0 acres	New York Forest Rangers	not named
20 August 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
11 August 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
8 July 2018	Smoking	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	N/A

Every fire recorded in Rensselaer County

Storms near this property

17 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Grafton, the town this property stands in, in 17 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 14 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	$100,000	no account filed
July 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	$30,000	no account filed
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	$8,000	no account filed
May 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	$5,000	no account filed
June 2023	Hail	Grafton	-	Hail around 1 inch in diameter fell in Grafton.
July 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	-	A couple of trees were downed in the Town of Grafton.
December 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	East Grafton	-	A tree was downed and laying on a power line on Babcock Lake Road in the Town of Petersburg.
September 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	-	A tree was reported down on State Route 2 in Grafton.
October 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	East Grafton	-	A tree was downed onto wires and a home.
June 2018	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	-	Trees and wires were downed.
May 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	East Grafton	-	A tree was reported down from thunderstorm winds.
August 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	East Grafton	-	Many trees snapped and uprooted in Grafton due to thunderstorm winds. The downed trees fell in a fan-shaped pattern.
June 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	-	Trees and wires were downed in Grafton as a result of thunderstorm winds.
August 2011	Flash Flood	Grafton	-	Route 2 was closed across Rensselaer County due to numerous reports of flooding and some wash outs. The Poesten Kill and Quaken Kill run along and cross Route 2. In Troy, a mudslide occurred on Route 2 (Brunswick Road) at Route 66 (Pawling Avenue) causing a house to collapse, two other houses were knocked from their foundations by about 8 feet and a large tree fell and destroyed an automobile shop. A home was destroyed in Poestenkill on Franklin Street by flood waters from the Poesten Kill.
July 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	-	Trees and large limbs were reported down in Grafton due to strong thunderstorm winds.
July 2010	Hail	Grafton	-	Quarter to ping pong ball sized hail was reported during a thunderstorm in Grafton.
July 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Grafton	-	Two trees were reported down in Grafton due to strong thunderstorm winds.

Every storm recorded in Rensselaer County

Maps showing this location

12 surveys

United States Geological Survey topographic sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the middle of the area the National Park Service maps for this listing, then testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.

1897 USGS Hoosick quadrangle1:62500 - 10 printings
1900 USGS Taconic quadrangle1:125000 - 4 printings
1946 USGS Grafton quadrangle1:31680 - 2 printings
1948 USGS Albany quadrangle1:250000
1954 USGS Grafton quadrangle1:24000 - 3 printings
1956 USGS Albany quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1957 USGS Albany quadrangle1:250000
1959 USGS Albany quadrangle1:250000
1962 USGS Albany quadrangle1:250000
1978 USGS Grafton quadrangle1:24000
1986 USGS Albany quadrangle1:100000
1989 USGS Albany quadrangle1:100000 - 2 printings

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Petersburgh United Methodist Church	4.5 miles	2004
Tibbits House	5.7 miles	1978
Cornell-Manchester Farmstead	5.7 miles	2012
Breese-Reynolds House	6.3 miles	2007
Brownell-Cornell-Gibbs Farmstead	6.3 miles	2012
Sherman Farm	6.5 miles	2003

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 11000253 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Rensselaer County	All 128 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

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.