Every fire lookout, on one map

Reading the map

Each marker's shape says what kind of structure it is, and its fill says whether it still stands. Colour only repeats what the shape and fill already say, so the map reads the same in any colour vision and in print.

Access warnings (private land, tribal land, closed sites) are shown prominently on each lookout's page. Firefinder shows the exact location of every site, so please respect those warnings.

How sure are we?

Every entry carries one of four labels, shown on its page:

Unverified

From a single source and not yet checked. Shown with a visible Unverified badge. Details may be wrong.

Facts agree

Two or more independent sources agree on where it is and whether it stands.

Researched

Its history has been researched and written up, with footnoted sources.

Verified

Researched, then checked independently.

When sources disagree, for example on where a lookout stood or when it was built, the page says so plainly instead of quietly picking one.

Approximate locations, and lookouts we can't place yet

Some sources name a lookout and its county but not where it stood. When the USGS Geographic Names Information System has exactly one summit, ridge, gap, cliff or rock of the same name in that county, Firefinder shows the lookout there as an approximate location: a dashed marker, an “Approximate location” note on its page, and always the Unverified badge. As soon as any source gives its real position, that replaces the guess.

The rest are not on the map at all. A town of the same name is not enough, because many towers were named for the nearest town but stood miles away. They are listed state by state on Lookouts we can't place yet, each with a Suggest a location button. If you know where one stood, please tell us.

Your checklist

You can mark lookouts as Visited, Stayed overnight or Want to go, on the map or on any lookout's page, and filter the map to show only those. The checklist is saved only in this browser. There are no accounts and nothing is sent anywhere.

Because it lives in one browser, clearing your browsing data deletes it. Download a copy now and then; you can import it on another device.

Download or import my checklist

Sources and credits

Firefinder takes facts (locations, types, dates, register numbers, agencies) from the sources below, credits them on every lookout page that uses them, and writes its own words. Their text is never copied.

Map and site

• Base map: OpenFreeMap, using OpenMapTiles and data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
• Topographic map: USGS The National Map (public domain): National Boundaries Dataset, 3DEP Elevation Program, Geographic Names Information System, National Hydrography Dataset, National Land Cover Database, National Structures Dataset and National Transportation Dataset; USGS Global Ecosystems; U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line data; USFS road data; Natural Earth Data; U.S. Department of State HIU; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.
• Old topo maps: the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain), scanned maps from the 1880s to 2006. The list of sheets comes from USGS TopoView; the scans themselves are read from The National Map's public storage. Firefinder reprojects them in your browser and softens their colours a little so the markers stay readable.
• Tower designs: facts from National Register of Historic Places documents, Historic American Buildings and Engineering Record surveys, Forest Service publications and the lookout registers and associations credited on the designs page, which links each design's sources and original plan drawings. The schematic drawings are Firefinder's own.
• Shaded relief at country scale: Natural Earth (public domain), served by OpenFreeMap.
• Terrain for the 3D views (view from the cab, what it could see, the smoke lesson): Terrain Tiles made by Mapzen (Tilezen Joerd) and hosted on the AWS Open Data Registry. United States 3DEP (formerly NED) and global GMTED2010 and SRTM terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1 sea-floor data courtesy of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. See the full attribution.
• Peak names: USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), public domain. Peak heights shown with the view are read from the terrain data and are approximate.
• Terrain engine: Firefinder's own, written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly, using the png and wasm-bindgen libraries (MIT or Apache-2.0). It runs in your browser; nothing is computed on a server.
• Map software: MapLibre GL JS (BSD-3-Clause).
• Typefaces: Public Sans and Besley (SIL Open Font License), served from this site.

Licences

Code

GNU GPL 3.0

Lookout database

Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. You may reuse and adapt it, including commercially, if you credit Firefinder and its sources and keep adapted databases open.

Our written histories

CC BY-SA 4.0. Quotations inside them belong to their authors.

Photos

Each photo keeps its own copyright and licence, shown in the credit line next to it. Being shown here does not relicense them.

Corrections and additions

Every lookout page has a Suggest an edit button. It opens a short form on GitHub with the lookout already filled in: tell us what is wrong, what is right, and how you know (a link, a book, or your own visit with its date). If you have photos you took yourself and are happy to share, say so in the form.

Privacy

No accounts, no cookies, no analytics. Your checklist and colour-theme choice stay in your browser. Like any web map, the map images are downloaded from OpenFreeMap's and the USGS's servers, which see your IP address as part of normal web traffic. “Show my location” on the map uses your device's location only in your browser, and only after you allow it. The 3D views download terrain tiles from Amazon's servers (AWS) only when you ask for one. The old topo maps, when you switch them on, come from USGS servers and The National Map's storage on Amazon's servers.