Fire lookout · Holmes County, Mississippi
Lexington Lookout Tower
Holmes County, MS tower the Register lists as a 90 ft Aermotor LS-40 with no build date; 1936 notices describe a CCC-built steel tower north of town, but the link is unconfirmed.
- Standing
- Restricted access
- Verified
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Restricted access
Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. Neither source describes public access; the Register describes a former county forester's site with a house and other buildings, so ask the Mississippi Forestry Commission before visiting
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerAermotor LS-40 tower, 90 ft per the Register (a July 1936 notice says 100 ft)The design: Aermotor LS-40
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1936
- Height
- 90 ft (27.4 m)
- Elevation
- 410 ft (125 m)
- Agency
- Mississippi Forestry Commission
- Land
- State land
- Location
- Holmes County, Mississippi
- Coordinates
- 33.06130, −90.01673
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ms-lexington
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 3.4 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
- 1936 BuiltSteel fire tower built by the local CCC camp on the poor house property north of Lexington and completed by late August 1936, per Lexington Advertiser notices. Link to the Register tower not confirmedSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
- 1936 EventTelephone line planned to take fire reports, and poles set to link the tower with other towersSource: easternuslookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1936 and 2023
- 2023 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered July 9, 2023 as US 1742, MS 59 after a July 2, 2023 site visitSource: 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 Lexington Lookout Tower is in Holmes County, Mississippi, and the Mississippi Forestry Commission administers it.1,2
Notices from The Lexington Advertiser in 1936, copied onto the Forest Lookouts site, describe a steel fire tower that the local CCC camp, the Civilian Conservation Corps, was building on the poor house property north of Lexington.2 The tower was meant to help forest rangers locate fires, and it was to have a telephone for sending in reports of fires.2 By late August the tower was finished, and county ranger J. R. Brown invited the public to come and look at it.2
The notices say a warden would be chosen later to watch the tower, and that telephone poles were going up to link it with other towers in the area.2 The sources we read do not name that warden or any fire the tower spotted.1,2
The Register lists the tower as an Aermotor LS-40 and gives its height as 90 feet. The July 1936 notice says 100 feet.1,2 We could not settle that gap. We also could not confirm that the 1936 tower is the same structure the Register lists, since the only links are the name and the county.1,2
The Register gives the build date as unknown. It says the site was once home to the county forester and now holds a house and many other buildings.1 It registered the tower on July 9, 2023, as US 1742, MS 59, after a site visit on July 2, 2023.1
We found no record that the tower was moved or taken down.1,2 The sources do not describe its present condition or any public access, so ask the Mississippi Forestry Commission before going to the site.1
- Lexington Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ms/lexington-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Lexington, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/lexington.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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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, ownership, 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, status, 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 1742 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Lexington (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.