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Fire lookout · Middlesex County, New Jersey

Jamesburg Station Fire Tower

A 1942 Aermotor tower built at Old Bridge under the wartime security program, moved to Thompson Park in 1963 as the Jamesburg Station fire tower.

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
Standing
Type
Cab on a towerLS-42 60-foot Aermotor steel tower, 48 ft to the cab floorThe design: Aermotor
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1942
Height
59 ft (18.0 m)
Elevation
48 ft (15 m)
Agency
New Jersey Forest Fire Service, Division B
Land
State land
Location
Middlesex County, New Jersey
Coordinates
40.33722, −74.43863
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-nj-jamesburg

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 3.4 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. 1942 BuiltErected at Old Bridge as the Old Bridge fire tower under the wartime home-front security programSource: nhlr.org
  2. No record between 1942 and 1963
  3. 1963 MovedMoved to Thompson Park, Monroe Township, Middlesex County, becoming the Jamesburg Station fire towerSource: nhlr.org
  4. No record between 1963 and 2004
  5. 2004 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered on the National Historic Lookout Register, March 3, 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.

The tower standing today in Thompson Park started life somewhere else. It went up in 1942 at Old Bridge as a 60-foot Aermotor LS-42 steel tower, raised under a wartime security program.1 The National Historic Lookout Register's nomination adds a caveat that the structure "may even have an as yet unconfirmed earlier life dating to 1924," though no source firms that up, so the 1924 date stays an open question rather than a fact.1

In 1963 the New Jersey Forest Fire Service moved it to its present site in Thompson Park, Monroe Township, Middlesex County, where it became the Jamesburg Station fire tower, carried in the registers as US 554, NJ 13, standing 48 feet to the cab floor with the structure rising 60 feet overall and assigned to the service's Division B.1,2

The cab itself is a minor rarity: it is one of only four known Aermotor cabs built with an unusual small-windowpane design.1 Bob Spear nominated the tower for the National Historic Lookout Register, and it was formally registered on March 3, 2004.1

As of the register's listing, the tower remains in active service for the Forest Fire Service.1 It stands on ordinary parkland in Thompson Park, a Middlesex County park. Neither source describes public visiting arrangements or a staircase open to climbers, so its access status is genuinely unknown rather than confirmed open or closed — treat it as a working fire-lookout tower on state land, not a general-admission attraction, unless the Forest Fire Service says otherwise.

  1. Jamesburg Station Fire Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/nj/jamesburg-station-fire-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  2. 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). ↩

Photos

Photo of Jamesburg 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, 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: type, 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, 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.