Fire lookout · Jefferson County, Alabama
Wharton Tower (East Lake Tower)
Also known as Wharton
A 1941 CCC-built Aermotor tower in Birmingham's Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, unique in Alabama for its rooftop platform.
- 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. Located in the City of Birmingham's Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, a public park with 14+ miles of trails; as of a 2016 report the tower itself was not open and there was only talk of restoring it for public use.
- Can you climb it?
- No
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower100-ft steel Aermotor MC-39 tower with a 7x7 ft cab and a rooftop observation platform, added originally to carry an aircraft beacon; the only lookout in Alabama built with this rooftop optionThe design: Aermotor MC-39
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1941
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 1,216 ft (371 m)
- Agency
- City of Birmingham and Birmingham Board of Education
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Jefferson County, Alabama
- Coordinates
- 33.56101, −86.70296
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-al-wharton-east-lake
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 2.8 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
- 1941 Built100-ft Aermotor MC-39 built by the Civilian Conservation Corps on Ruffner MountainSources: nhlr.org, bhamnow.com
- No record between 1941 and 2010
- 2010 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered as US 870 / AL 49 on January 18, 2010, nominated by Thomas KaufmannSource: 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 4 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
The Wharton Lookout Tower, also known as East Lake Tower, stands in the City of Birmingham's Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, a 1,038-acre public park established in 1977 with more than 14 miles of hiking trails.1 The tower itself predates the preserve by decades: it is a 100-foot steel Aermotor MC-39, built in 1941 by the Civilian Conservation Corps on Ruffner Mountain near the city's East Lake neighborhood.2,3
What sets it apart is its roof. It is, in fact, "the only lookout in Alabama with a rooftop observation platform."2 That rooftop deck was an option Aermotor offered on its 7-by-7-foot cabs, seen on a handful of towers further north but almost nowhere in the South; here it was added to carry an aircraft beacon.2
The tower has long been run jointly by the City of Birmingham and the Birmingham Board of Education, with the Alabama Forestry Commission and the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center as cooperators.2 It was added to the National Historic Lookout Register on January 18, 2010, as US 870 / AL 49, nominated by Thomas Kaufmann.2
No fire-watch or staffing history survives in the sources available here, and nothing found says when, or whether, the tower stopped being used to spot smoke. By 2016 the structure was still standing but not open to climbers: a local outlet reported that "several years ago, there was talk about refurbishing the tower for public use," and that the preserve's then executive director had given a public talk on the tower's restoration potential.3 Whether that restoration ever happened is not documented in what was reviewed for this story.
Today the tower remains on the ridge above the nature preserve's trail network, a surviving piece of the CCC-era fire-watch system inside what is now one of Birmingham's largest urban nature preserves. The preserve's trails are open to the public, but absent any newer word on the tower's condition, it should be treated as closed to climbing rather than assumed safe to ascend.
- Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruffner_Mountain_Nature_Preserve (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
- Wharton Tower (East Lake Tower), National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/al/wharton-tower-east-lake-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
- A Birmingham treasure – the Ruffner Mountain fire lookout tower, Bham Now, https://bhamnow.com/2016/11/28/a-birmingham-treasure-the-ruffner-mountain-fire-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
Photos
Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.
Sources
- National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: type, links easternuslookouts.weebly.com · No licence stated; facts only (county, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, status, height, design hints, register links). The site's own historical quotes, newspaper citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, agency, access, visiting details, 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 870 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- NHLR register entry (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- A Birmingham treasure - the Ruffner Mountain fire lookout tower (Bham Now) (opens another site)
- Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- Wharton (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.