Fire lookout · Haywood County, North Carolina
Mount Sterling Tower
A 1933 CCC-built Aermotor tower on a high Smokies summit, now an NPS radio repeater, nominally still climbable per its 2007 register listing.
- 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. Reached by maintained NPS trails (Mount Sterling Trail, Mount Sterling Ridge Trail, Baxter Creek Trail) and no source calls the tower closed, but none states current public access or climbing rules either.
- Can you climb it?
- Yes
- Road to the top?
- No, you have to hike
- Trail
- 2.7 mi one-way via Mount Sterling Trail from Mount Sterling Gap; also reachable via the 5.3 mi Mount Sterling Ridge Trail or the Baxter Creek Trail from Big Creek Campground.
- Staffing
- Not staffed (as of 2026)
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower60 ft steel Aermotor tower, 7 ft x 7 ft metal cabThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Steel
- Built
- 1933
- Height
- 60 ft (18.3 m)
- Elevation
- 5,842 ft (1,781 m)
- Agency
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park (National Park Service); administered by Haywood County, North Carolina per its NHLR listing
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Haywood County, North Carolina
- Coordinates
- 35.70231, −83.12225
- Registers
- NHLR US 689 · NC 10
- NGS FB 2455
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-nc-mount-sterling
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
- 1933 BuiltCCC-built, prefabricated Aermotor steel tower with 7x7 ft metal cabSource: nhlr.org
- No record between 1933 and 2007
- 2007 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered March 19, 2007 as US 689 / NC 10, nominated by Peter BarrSource: 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 4 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Mount Sterling Tower stands at 5,842 feet, on one of the higher summits of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Haywood County, North Carolina.1 The Civilian Conservation Corps built it in 1933: a 60-foot steel Aermotor tower topped with a 7-by-7-foot metal cab.1 A cabin for the fire watchman once stood just north of the tower.1
For years the tower was staffed on a fixed seasonal schedule, with lookouts working two-week tours from mid-February to mid-May and again from mid-October to mid-December. When they weren't on duty in the cab, they lived in that cabin.1 The summit has long drawn backcountry campers as well.1
Like most fire lookouts, Mount Sterling's watch eventually ended. Wikipedia's entry for the mountain now calls the tower on its summit "abandoned."2 The National Park Service kept the structure standing, though, and put it to a new job as a radio repeater.1 The register entry describing it says the trap door was still open and the climb still worth it for the view, though neither source gives a date for when fire-watching there stopped.
The tower was added to the National Historic Lookout Register on March 19, 2007, nominated by Peter Barr, under the numbers US 689 and NC 10.1 It can be reached by the 2.7-mile Mount Sterling Trail from Mount Sterling Gap, or by longer routes: the 5.3-mile Mount Sterling Ridge Trail, or the Baxter Creek Trail from Big Creek Campground.2 No source found for this entry states that the tower is closed to hikers, but none confirms current public access either, so anyone planning to climb it should check current National Park Service guidance first.
- Mount Sterling Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nc/mount-sterling-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
- Mount Sterling (Great Smoky Mountains), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Sterling_(Great_Smoky_Mountains) (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
Photos
Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.
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, 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
- tnlandforms.us fire lookout towers (Tom Dunigan) -- GA, NC, TN (opens another site) Gave us: register numbers, links tnlandforms.us (Tom Dunigan) · No licence stated; facts only (coordinates, county, elevation, NGS/GFC/BLL register cross-references, status where given). · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: 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
- Wikidata -- US fire lookout towers (Q748998 and subclasses) (opens another site) Gave us: height, photos, links Wikidata · CC0 1.0 (Wikidata). Images keep their own Commons licence/credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, access, staffing, visiting details, 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 689 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- NHLR register entry (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Mount Sterling (Great Smoky Mountains) (Wikipedia) (opens another site)
- Mt Sterling (tnlandforms.us (Tom Dunigan)) (opens another site)
- Mount Sterling (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- Wikidata item Q86927099 (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.