Fire lookout · Monroe County, Mississippi
Splunge Lookout Tower
Standing 90 ft Aermotor tower in Monroe County, MS, registered by NHLR in July 2022; bottom stair flights were missing at the visit and the build date is unknown.
- Standing
- Access unknown
- Verified
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
- Type
- Cab on a tower90 ft Aermotor tower with a parallel staircase, 13 landings and 14 flightsThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 90 ft (27.4 m)
- Elevation
- 513 ft (156 m)
- Agency
- Mississippi Forestry Commission
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Monroe County, Mississippi
- Coordinates
- 34.01171, −88.33104
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ms-splunge
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 2.9 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 assessmentRegister site visit recorded 17 July 2022; bottom stair flights reported missingSource: nhlr.org
- 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register 18 July 2022; 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 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
The Splunge Lookout Tower stands in Monroe County, Mississippi, at about 513 feet above sea level.1 Splunge is an unincorporated community in the same county, and Wikipedia says the tower is listed on the National Historic Lookout Register.2
The register describes a 90-foot Aermotor tower with a parallel staircase, 13 landings and 14 flights of stairs.1 Aermotor built its towers from galvanized steel.3 The register gives no build date.1 I found no record of who staffed the tower or which fires it watched.
The register's site visit took place on July 17, 2022, and the tower was registered on July 18, 2022, with Jason Johns as nominator.1
At that visit, the bottom flights of the stairs were missing.1 Without those bottom flights, the stair cannot be reached from the ground. An online lookout index files it under Mississippi as Splunge, in Monroe County.4
The register names the Mississippi Forestry Commission as administrator, and I found no later report on the tower's condition, repairs or public access.1 The map database marks it as a lattice tower with a site elevation of 157 meters.5 Check with the Forestry Commission before planning any visit.
- Splunge Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ms/splunge-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
- Splunge, Mississippi, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splunge,_Mississippi (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
- 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 2026-10-08). ↩
- SPLUNGE, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/splunge.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
- Splunge Lookout Tower, OpenStreetMap, https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/357997254 (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
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: 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
- 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, 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 1682 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Splunge, Mississippi (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- The Aermotor Company: From Windmills to Forest Lookout Towers (Society for Industrial Archeology) (opens another site)
- Splunge (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- OpenStreetMap node 357997254 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.