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Fire lookout · Pontotoc County, Mississippi

Oak Hill Lookout Tower

Pontotoc County, MS 100 ft Aermotor LS-40; NHLR-registered July 2022 as US 1634; register says MFC no longer uses the site though it names MFC as administrator; no build or fire history found.

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 names MFC as administrator and says the MFC no longer uses the site; no public access described in sources read

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower100 ft Aermotor LS-40The 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
570 ft (174 m)
Agency
Mississippi Forestry Commission (administrator per register; register also says the MFC no longer uses the site)
Land
Unknown
Location
Pontotoc County, Mississippi
Coordinates
34.32736, −88.94944
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-ms-oak-hill

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 3.3 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. 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered July 4, 2022 as US 1634, MS 19; nominated by Jason JohnsSource: nhlr.org
  2. 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 Oak Hill Lookout Tower is in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, at an elevation of 570 feet, or 174 meters.1 The register describes a 100-foot Aermotor LS-40 at the site.1 The LS-40 was one of several Aermotor lookout models, alongside the LS-50 and MC-39.2 An industrial history article says its stairs ran inside the tower, which made it safer to climb than the other two models it covers, both of which used ladders.2

The register gives no build date, and we found no record of who built the tower or who staffed it.1 OpenStreetMap tags the structure as a lattice tower and gives its elevation as 171 meters, a few meters below the register's figure.3,1

The register was filed on July 4, 2022, on the nomination of Jason Johns.1 It names the Mississippi Forestry Commission (MFC) as administrator, but the same entry says the MFC no longer uses the site.1 We could not reconcile those two lines, and the register gives no date for any change.

We found no public access information and no recent report on the tower's condition. Ask the Forestry Commission before going near it, and please do not climb it.

  1. Oak Hill Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ms/oak-hill-lookout-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. Oak Hill Lookout Tower, OpenStreetMap node 357997190, https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/357997190 (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Photo of Oak Hill Lookout Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Oak Hill Lookout Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Oak Hill Lookout Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Oak Hill Lookout Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) 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
  2. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: type, links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. 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

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