FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Camden County, New Jersey

Blue Anchor Station Fire Tower

A 1932 CCC-built steel tower in the NJ Pine Barrens, replacing an earlier tower moved to Stokes State Forest; still actively staffed today.

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
Staffed during fire season (as of 2024)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerMcKlintock-Marshall 86-ft steel tower with 7'x7' metal cab (CCC, 1932)The designs: McClintic-Marshall, Aermotor
Built of
Steel
Built
1920
Height
85 ft (26.0 m)
Elevation
152 ft (46 m)
Agency
New Jersey Forest Fire Service
Land
State land
Location
Camden County, New Jersey
Coordinates
39.68297, −74.88913
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-nj-blue-anchor

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 3.7 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. 1920 BuiltFirst tower at the site reported erected and opened by the state's 1920-21 annual report (an Aermotor model, per NHLR)Sources: easternuslookouts.weebly.com, nhlr.org
  2. 1932 BuiltCurrent 86-ft McKlintock-Marshall steel tower with 7x7-ft cab built by the CCC, replacing the relocated towerSources: nhlr.org, en.wikipedia.org
  3. 1932 MovedNHLR's Blue Anchor page says the original Aermotor tower was removed and re-erected at Stokes State Forest as the Culver tower; NHLR's own page for that lookout (Culvers Lookout, US44/NJ1) instead dates its present 47-ft Aermotor tower to 1933 and does not mention Blue Anchor, so the identification and the exact year are unconfirmedSources: nhlr.org, nhlr.org
  4. No record between 1932 and 2004
  5. 2004 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterAdded to the National Historic Lookout Register, March 15, 2004, nominated by Bob SpearSource: nhlr.org
  6. 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 4 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Blue Anchor Station Fire Tower stands in Winslow Township, Camden County, part of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service's statewide lookout network.1 A steel tower was already up and running at the site by the time the state's Department of Conservation and Development filed its 1920–21 annual report, which noted that a "steel tower has been erected and opened at Blue Anchor, Camden County, making a total of nine active lookouts now in operation."2 That first tower was an Aermotor, per the National Historic Lookout Register, which says it was taken down in 1932 and moved north to become the "Culver tower" in Stokes State Forest.1 That claim is hard to fully square with the register's own page for the Stokes lookout (Culvers Lookout, US 44/NJ 1), which instead dates its present 47-foot Aermotor tower to 1933 and makes no mention of Blue Anchor, so whether it is really the same structure, and whether the move happened in 1932 or 1933, is not settled.1,3 In Blue Anchor's place, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the 86-foot steel tower that stands today, made by the McKlintock-Marshall company with a 7-by-7-foot cab on top.1,4 The National Historic Lookout Register lists it as US 566, New Jersey's NJ 19, nominated by Bob Spear and added to the register on March 15, 2004.1

For decades the tower was watched by a single observer working rotating shifts. A Courier-Post reporter who visited in July 1940 found Hugh Keenan already twenty years into the job, equipped with a two-way radio, a telephone, maps, instruments for wind and humidity, and a sextant for pinpointing a fire's exact location; on spotting smoke he would radio the nearest district warden.2 The tower covers forest sections in the Forest Fire Service's Division C, one of 21 towers that still watch over the state.4

That tradition continues. As of 2024, fire observer Mark Turner was climbing the tower's narrow zig-zag staircase for eight-hour shifts alone, scanning the surrounding Pine Barrens for smoke he says can be spotted from seven or eight miles off. Forest Fire Service Chief Bill Donnelly called the tower "critical in the response to wildfires," and the agency credits its network of towers with spotting more than half of New Jersey's wildfires.5

Blue Anchor Station is still standing and in active service, one of the dwindling number of New Jersey's fire towers that remains staffed rather than retired. It sits on state land and is worked by Forest Fire Service personnel; nothing found here says whether the public can climb it, so visitors should assume it is not open without permission and check with the Forest Fire Service before approaching.

  1. Blue Anchor Station Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nj/blue-anchor-station-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  2. Blue Anchor, Forest Lookouts (Eastern U.S. Lookouts), https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/blue-anchor.html (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  3. Culvers Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nj/culvers-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  4. List of New Jersey Forest Fire Service fire towers, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Jersey_Forest_Fire_Service_fire_towers (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  5. Tour New Jersey's Blue Anchor Fire Tower in Camden County: "Wildfires here are a huge threat", CBS News Philadelphia, https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/tour-new-jerseys-blue-anchor-fire-tower-camden-county-winslow-township-fire/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩

Photos

Photo of Blue Anchor Station Fire 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, 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
  2. Wikipedia: List of New Jersey Forest Fire Service fire towers Gave us: height, ownership, links Wikipedia (NJFFS fire tower list) · CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikipedia). Facts only (register numbers, elevation, height, division, coordinates); article prose/notes not reproduced. Photos are Wikimedia Commons files, each with its own licence on its file page. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) 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
  4. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, staffing, 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.