Fire lookout · Talladega County, Alabama
Kentuck Lookout Tower
Talladega County, AL tower in the Talladega National Forest; the NHLR describes a 100 ft Aermotor run by the USFS but gives no build date and no record after a 2022 visit.
- Standing
- Access unknown
- Verified
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
- Type
- Cab on a tower100 ft Aermotor tower with a diagonal staircase (model not stated)The design: Aermotor
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 1,192 ft (363 m)
- Agency
- USFS
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Talladega County, Alabama
- Coordinates
- 33.52997, −85.83866
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-al-kentuck
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 3.1 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
- 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered July 24, 2022 as US 1691, AL 81; nominated by Jason JohnsSource: nhlr.org
- 2022 EventRegister page notes a site visit dated 5/1/22Source: nhlr.org
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
The Kentuck Lookout Tower is in the Talladega National Forest, in Talladega County, Alabama, at about 1,192 feet (363 m) above sea level.1 The National Historic Lookout Register describes it as a 100-foot Aermotor tower with a diagonal staircase, and it lists the U.S. Forest Service as the administering agency.1
The register gives no construction date, so when the tower went up and who built it is not on record in the sources we checked.1 We also found no account of who staffed it, what fires it watched, or whether its use ever changed.
The register page notes a site visit on May 1, 2022. The tower was entered on the register on July 24, 2022, with Jason Johns as nominator.1 Its condition since that visit is not recorded in anything we could find.
Across Alabama, a 1819 News opinion column by Thomas Kaufmann puts the number of historic lookouts still standing at probably fewer than 75.2 The same column says many are unsafe and illegal to climb.2 The register gives no current access rules for Kentuck, so anyone curious should check with the Forest Service before visiting and enjoy the tower from the ground.1
- Kentuck Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/al/kentuck-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- 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). ↩
Photos
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Sources
- National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, type, what it is built of, status, register numbers, agency, ownership, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, 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
- NHLR register entry US 1691 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Thomas Kaufmann: Keeping Alabama's historic lookout towers (1819 News) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.