Fire lookout · Stone County, Mississippi
University Lookout Tower
A 100-foot steel fire tower on the De Soto National Forest, no longer in service and kept by the Forest Service for emergencies.
- 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 tower100-foot International Derrick Co. steel tower with 7 by 7 foot metal cabThe design: IDECO
- Built of
- Steel
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- 221 ft (67 m)
- Agency
- U.S. Forest Service
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Stone County, Mississippi
- Coordinates
- 30.73295, −88.91225
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ms-university
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 3.2 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
- 2000 EventCongress bought the University Forest Lands tract for the De Soto National Forest; the tower came with itSource: nhlr.org
- 2003 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered as NHLR US 525 (MS 5) on July 24, 2003Source: 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 University Lookout Tower stands in Stone County, Mississippi, in the De Soto National Forest.1 The land around it has an unusual past. The National Historic Lookout Register says the U.S. Navy once held 23,000 acres in southern Mississippi to supply virgin longleaf timber for ship masts. After wooden sailing ships fell out of use, the state received the land to endow the University of Mississippi.1
Until 2000 the tract had been run as University Forest Lands. That year Congress bought it and added it to the De Soto National Forest.1 The tower came with that purchase.1 The register describes it as a 100-foot steel tower from International Derrick Co., with a 7-by-7-foot metal cab, and does not say when it was built.1
The tower has been taken out of service, but the U.S. Forest Service keeps it up for emergencies.1 Its register number is US 525. It was registered on July 24, 2003, on the nomination of a district ranger on the De Soto Ranger District.1
The register gives no public access information.1 Please do not climb the tower. Ask the De Soto Ranger District, which the register lists as a cooperator, before planning any visit.
- University Lookout Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ms/university-lookout-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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Sources
- National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, type, what it is built of, status, register numbers, agency, ownership, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.