Hunter Mountain Fire Tower

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. 9 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1900.

From the record

“The Hunter Mountain Fire Tower is located on the summit of the eponymous mountain, second highest of the Catskill Mountains in the U.S. state of New York. It was the first of 23 fire lookout towers built by the state in the region, and the next-to-last of the five still standing to be abandoned.”
Wikipedia article Hunter Mountain Fire Tower, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 101 National Register listings published here for Greene County · listed in 1997 · category: Structure.

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

The listing

Address. Roughly following Hunter Brook from Spruceton Rd. to Hunter Mountain, Hunter, 12492
When was it listed? June 1997
Category. structure
Town. Lexington town
National Register reference number. 97000569 - 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

29 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 29 fires within 5 miles of Hunter Mountain Fire Tower between 1993 and 2016, burning about 212 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 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	11
Debris and open burning	8
Arson/incendiarism	5
Power generation/transmission/distribution	3
Smoking	1
Recreation and ceremony	1

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 July 2003	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
7 May 2015	Power generation/transmission/distribution	146 acres	New York Forest Rangers	HEAVENLY VALLEY FIRE
7 May 2015	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
7 May 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
7 May 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Fire Department of New York	not named
3 May 1993	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	New York Forest Rangers	not named
15 May 2001	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	New York Forest Rangers	not named
15 May 2001	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	New York Forest Rangers	not named

Every fire recorded in Greene County

Storms near this property

6 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Hunter, the town this property stands in, in 6 storm reports between 1995 and 2022: 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail, 1 heavy rain. 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 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Hunter	$12,000	no account filed
October 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Hunter	$5,000	no account filed
July 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Hunter	-	Two trees were reported down in the town of Hunter.
October 2017	Heavy Rain	Hunter	-	Social Media reported 7 inches of heavy rainfall.
February 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Hunter	-	A tree was blown down in Hunter during a thunderstorm.
July 1995	Hail	Hunter	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Greene County

Maps showing this location

9 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.

1900 USGS Phoenicia quadrangle1:62500
1903 USGS Phoenicia quadrangle1:62500 - 9 printings
1946 USGS Lexington quadrangle1:24000
1948 USGS Binghamton quadrangle1:250000
1950 USGS Binghamton quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1958 USGS Binghamton quadrangle1:250000
1960 USGS Lexington quadrangle1:24000 - 3 printings
1963 USGS Binghamton quadrangle1:250000
1986 USGS Pepacton Reservoir 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
Hunter Synagogue	2.6 miles	1999
IOOF Hall	2.6 miles	2002
Harry Fischel House	2.6 miles	2000
St. Mary's of the Mountain Church	2.9 miles	1999
Elka Park Historic District	4.7 miles	1993
Church of St. John the Evangelist	5.3 miles	2004

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 97000569 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Greene County	All 101 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.