FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Union County, Florida

Union (Cliftonville) Fire Tower

Aermotor LS-40 tower at the Union Forestry Site, Union County, FL; NHLR-registered January 2, 2026 and believed out of service as of 2025. No build date found.

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
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerAermotor LS-40 towerThe design: Aermotor LS-40
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
Unknown
Height
Unknown
Elevation
143 ft (44 m)
Agency
Florida Department of Agriculture
Land
Unknown
Location
Union County, Florida
Coordinates
30.04522, −82.39220
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-fl-union-cliftonville

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

  1. 2025 Condition assessmentNHLR says the tower is believed to be out of service as of 2025Source: nhlr.org
  2. 2026 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register on January 2, 2026 as US 1812, FL 30Source: nhlr.org
  3. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The Union (Cliftonville) Fire Tower is an Aermotor LS-40 lookout tower at the Union Forestry Site in Union County, Florida.1 The register lists it as US 1812, FL 30 and was added on January 2, 2026.1 The Florida Department of Agriculture administers it.1

The register does not say when the tower was built, who staffed it or what fires it watched.1 The register names the model as an Aermotor LS-40, and Aermotor built its towers from galvanized steel.1,2

According to the register, the tower had likely gone out of service by 2025.1 We found no other source that describes this tower.1

A photograph on Wikimedia Commons, taken on 31 October 2015 and captioned "Florida Forest Service tower, Union County, Florida," was shot from a spot close to the register's coordinates for the tower.1,3 We think it likely shows this tower. That match is our own comparison, not something the caption states. The photo is by Michael Rivera and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Today the register does not say whether visitors may go near the tower or climb it. Ask the Florida Department of Agriculture before you go out there.1

  1. Union (Cliftonville) Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/fl/union-cliftonville-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. 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). ↩
  3. File:Florida Forest Service tower, Union County.JPG, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Florida_Forest_Service_tower,_Union_County.JPG (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Photo of Union (Cliftonville) Fire Tower
Photo: Robert Luher, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Florida Forest Service tower, Union County, Florida. Taken 31 October 2015; camera position near the register's coordinates (our comparison).
Florida Forest Service tower, Union County, Florida. Taken 31 October 2015; camera position near the register's coordinates (our comparison) (2015)Photo: Michael Rivera (own work, via Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

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

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) 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
  2. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, dates, photos, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.