FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Autauga County, Alabama

Evergreen Lookout Tower

1949 Aermotor MC-39 tower built by the Alabama Forestry Commission, registered by NHLR in 2009; no visit, staffing or present-day source found.

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
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower100-foot Aermotor MC-39 tower with 7 by 7 foot cabThe design: Aermotor MC-39
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1949
Height
100 ft (30.5 m)
Elevation
604 ft (184 m)
Agency
Alabama Forestry Commission
Land
Unknown
Location
Autauga County, Alabama
Coordinates
32.55821, −86.75930
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-al-evergreen

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 2.9 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. 1949 BuiltNHLR: construction completed by the Alabama Forestry Commission in 1949Source: nhlr.org
  2. No record between 1949 and 2009
  3. 2009 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered June 23, 2009 as US 812, AL 13; nominated by Thomas KaufmannSource: nhlr.org
  4. 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 Alabama Forestry Commission finished building the Evergreen Lookout Tower in 1949.1 The National Historic Lookout Register describes it as a 100-foot Aermotor MC-39 with a 7-by-7-foot cab.1 Thomas Kaufmann, in a 1819 News column on Alabama's towers generally, says the MC-39 was the most widespread steel lookout model in the state's forests.2

The Register places the tower at Evergreen in Autauga County, and it gives the elevation as 604 feet, or 184 metres.1 The Register entry was added on June 23, 2009, with Thomas Kaufmann as nominator.1 An OpenStreetMap entry for the site calls it a lattice observation tower, but it lists the elevation as 174 metres, which does not match the Register.3

Kaufmann's column also reports that the state holds on to roughly a third of the lookouts it once had, and that many of those left are unsafe and climbing them is illegal.2 Those points are about the state as a whole, not this tower specifically.

The sources read say nothing about this tower's fire history, the people who staffed it, or its condition since the Register's entry. No visit report appears on the Register page, so whether the tower still stands is not confirmed here. Anyone curious about it should contact the Alabama Forestry Commission before going to look.

  1. Evergreen Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/al/evergreen-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Thomas Kaufmann, "Keeping Alabama's historic lookout towers," 1819 News, https://1819news.com/news/item/thomas-kaufmann-keeping-alabamas-historic-lookout-towers (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Evergreen Lookout Tower (node 358997016), OpenStreetMap, https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/358997016 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Photo of Evergreen Lookout Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, type, what it is built of, status, register numbers, agency, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, agency, 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.