Fire lookout · Dixie County, Florida
Jonesboro Fire Tower
100-foot Aermotor LS-40 fire tower in Dixie County, Florida; NHLR-registered 2016. The Register says the site is mostly abandoned but the tower is still used occasionally.
- 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 Aermotor LS-40 tower with a standard cabThe design: Aermotor LS-40
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 31 ft (9 m)
- Agency
- Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Dixie County, Florida
- Coordinates
- 29.70889, −83.29472
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-fl-jonesboro
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
- 2016 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered July 24, 2016 as US 1064, FL 12; nominated by Robert SpearSource: 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 Jonesboro Fire Tower stands in Dixie County, Florida.1 The National Historic Lookout Register's entry gives it as a 100-foot Aermotor LS-40 with a standard cab, and lists its elevation as 31 feet.1 I could not find a build date in the sources I read, so the year it went up is still unknown.
A 1956 recollection of forest service work in Dixie County, reprinted in a Florida Division of Forestry history booklet, says the service began in the county in 1934, when the Putnam Tower was built.2 That is a starting point for the county's towers, not a record of this one.
The Register says the state Division of Forestry has mostly left the site behind, though the tower still gets some use now and then when fire danger calls for it.1 The sources do not say who staffs the tower or how often.
The Register lists the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services as the administering agency.1 It records the tower's registration on July 24, 2016, as US 1064, FL 12, with Robert Spear as nominator.1 Nothing I read says whether the public may visit or climb it. Check with the Florida Forest Service before any trip, and do not climb the tower without permission.
- Jonesboro Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/fl/jonesboro-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Florida Division of Forestry History, Florida Division of Forestry (hosted on Scribd), https://www.scribd.com/document/237100892/A-Photographic-History-of-the-Florida-Division-of-Forestry (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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: 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, 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 1064 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- NHLR register entry (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Florida Division of Forestry History (Florida Division of Forestry (hosted on Scribd)) (opens another site)
- Jonesboro (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.