Fire lookout · Pike County, Alabama
Sanders Hill Fire Tower
A 100-foot MC-39 Aermotor with a 7x7 ft cab, built for the Alabama Forestry Commission in 1957 or 1958; the register gives both years.
- 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-foot MC-39 Aermotor with a 7x7 ft cabThe design: Aermotor MC-39
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1958
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 520 ft (159 m)
- Agency
- Alabama Forestry Commission
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Pike County, Alabama
- Coordinates
- 31.70077, −86.03263
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-al-sanders-hill
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
- 1958 BuiltRegister's Built field gives 1958; its description says constructed in 1957 by a private contractorSource: nhlr.org
- No record between 1958 and 2010
- 2010 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterDate registered per NHLR detail page: January 18, 2010Source: NHLR register entry
- 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 Sanders Hill tower is in Pike County, Alabama, and the Alabama Forestry Commission administers it.1 The register gives 1958 as the build year, but its own description says a private contractor constructed the tower in 1957 for the commission.1 The description also spells the hill "Saunders Hill," while the heading uses "Sanders."1
The tower is a 100-foot MC-39 Aermotor with a 7-by-7-foot cab, and the register says it is among the most recent lookouts built in Alabama.1 A 1819 News opinion column says the MC-39 was the steel design most often seen in Alabama's forests.2
We found no record of who staffed the tower or of any fires it helped with.
The register shows a registration date of January 18, 2010, and a nomination by Thomas Kaufmann.1 It does not describe the tower's condition.1 We could not find a newer account of whether it still stands.
Today we could not confirm whether the tower can be visited. The same 1819 News column estimates there are probably under 75 historic lookouts still standing in Alabama, and says many are unsafe and that climbing them is illegal.2 Please do not climb this tower unless the Forestry Commission confirms that the site is open.
- Sanders Hill Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/al/sanders-hill-fire-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, 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, 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 868 (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.