Fire lookout · Orange County, Florida
Magnolia Fire Tower
Aermotor MC-39 lookout built in 1933 for the Florida Division of Forestry; ownership has reverted to adjacent landowners.
- Standing
- Private land
- Verified
Private land
No public access. Please do not trespass; view it only from public land. The register says ownership has reverted to the adjacent landowners. Ask them before going near it.
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Private land. See the warning at the top of this page.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerAermotor MC-39The design: Aermotor MC-39
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1933
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- 73 ft (22 m)
- Agency
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Orange County, Florida
- Coordinates
- 28.42489, −81.12308
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-fl-magnolia
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
- 1933 BuiltAermotor MC-39 built for the Florida Division of ForestrySource: nhlr.org
- No record between 1933 and 2016
- 2016 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register; 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 Magnolia Fire Tower stands in Orange County, Florida, and was built in 1933.1 The National Historic Lookout Register calls it an Aermotor MC-39 tower, 100 to 120 feet tall, built for the Florida Division of Forestry.1 Aermotor made several lookout models, and the MC-39 was one of them.2 Its heights were standardized, though some were customized.2
The register says ownership has passed back to adjacent landowners. It also names the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as administrator, a role the register does not connect to ownership.1 We found nothing about its staffing, fires, repairs or any move, so those parts of its history are still unknown.
The register added the tower in July 2016, on a nomination by Robert Spear.1
Treat it as private land, because the adjacent landowners now own it.1 Ask the owners before going near it.
- Magnolia Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/fl/magnolia-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- The Aermotor Company: From Windmills to Forest Lookout Towers, Society for Industrial Archeology, https://www.sia-web.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Vol48_No4_Fall_2019_Web1.pdf (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
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, agency, access, 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 1141 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- The Aermotor Company: From Windmills to Forest Lookout Towers (Society for Industrial Archeology) (opens another site)
- Magnolia (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.