Fire lookout · Newton County, Mississippi
Newton Lookout Tower
Newton County, MS 100 ft Aermotor administered by the Mississippi Forestry Commission; NHLR-registered July 2022 as US 1661; no build date, staffing or fire history found.
- 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. Register describes active MFC use (Region 3, Area 32); no public access arrangement found in sources read
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower100 ft Aermotor with a straight internal staircaseThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 485 ft (148 m)
- Agency
- Mississippi Forestry Commission
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Newton County, Mississippi
- Coordinates
- 32.37092, −89.12073
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ms-newton
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 3.0 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
- 2022 Condition assessmentNHLR site visit July 9, 2022: all stairs intact; site actively used by MFCSource: nhlr.org
- 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered July 10, 2022 as US 1661, MS 25; nominated by Jason JohnsSource: 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 Newton Lookout Tower stands in Newton County, Mississippi, and the Mississippi Forestry Commission (MFC) administers the site.1 The National Historic Lookout Register lists it as a 100-foot Aermotor with a straight stair on the inside.1 Aermotor made several lookout models at set heights, but the sources we read do not say which model this tower is.2
No build date turns up in the sources. The register lists the year as unknown.1 OpenStreetMap maps the structure as a lattice observation tower and gives its elevation as 146 meters, where the register says 485 feet, or 148 meters.3,1 A lookout history site lists a Newton entry under Newton County and nothing more.4 We found no record of the staff who worked the tower or of any fire it watched.
The register records a site visit on July 9, 2022, when all the stairs were intact.1 The entry was filed on July 10, 2022, on the nomination of Jason Johns.1 It also says the MFC is actively using the site, as part of its Region 3, Area 32 work.1
We have no current condition report and found no public access arrangement for the site. Treat it as a working state site until the Forestry Commission says otherwise, and ask them before going near it. Please do not climb it.
- Newton Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ms/newton-lookout-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). ↩
- Newton Lookout Tower, OpenStreetMap node 357997188, https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/357997188 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Mississippi, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/mississippi.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
- OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures (opens another site) Gave us: type, links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 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 1661 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Mississippi (Forest Lookouts) (opens another site)
- The Aermotor Company: From Windmills to Forest Lookout Towers (Society for Industrial Archeology) (opens another site)
- OpenStreetMap node 357997188 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.