Fire lookout · McCurtain County, Oklahoma
Jadie Tower
McCurtain County, OK tower; agency sheet dates it 1953 (registry says 1950), observer retired 2016, station listed closed, and the land is now Ouachita National Forest property.
- Status unknown
- Closed
- Verified
Closed
The site is closed to visitors. Station listed as closed by Oklahoma Forestry Services; the tower is on Ouachita National Forest land and no public visiting arrangement was found
Status unknown: We do not know yet whether it still stands. Agency sheet lists the station as closed, and its observer retired in 2016; the sheet is a 2025 Instagram post of a circa 1985 photo, so the closed status may be out of date; no source read confirms the tower's condition today
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Closed. See the warning at the top of this page.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- sources disagree
- Type
- Cab on a tower110-foot galvanized steel tower (agency sheet); the registry says a 100-foot Aermotor with a 7x7-foot cabThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1950
- Height
- 110 ft (33.5 m)
- Elevation
- 167 ft (51 m)
- Agency
- Oklahoma Forestry Services and Tiak Ranger District (Ouachita National Forest); land now owned by USDA-Ouachita NF
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- McCurtain County, Oklahoma
- Coordinates
- 33.93167, −91.55000 (approximate)
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-ok-jadie
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 3.0 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
- 1950 Built'Built' field on NHLR detail pageSource: NHLR register entry
- 1952 EventProperty was part of the Land Utilization Project (OK-LU-24) under an agreement dated October 15, 1952Source: instagram.com
- 1953 BuiltAgency data sheet: tower erected 1953. The registry's 1950 'Built' field and its 1930s description disagreeSource: instagram.com
- No record between 1953 and 2009
- 2009 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered July 28, 2009 as US 821, OK 4Source: nhlr.org
- 2016 Last staffedForest tower observer retired in 2016; station listed as closedSource: instagram.com
- TodayStatus unknownWe do not know whether it still stands.
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 Jadie Tower site lies in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, on land now owned by the Ouachita National Forest.1
The sources do not agree on when it went up. The registry gives 1950 as the build year, but its description says the Forest Service built it in the 1930s.2 A forest lookout list also says the 1930s, without an exact date.3 The Oklahoma Forestry Services data sheet gives 1953 as the year the tower was erected, and says the property had been part of a Land Utilization Project under an agreement dated October 15, 1952.1 We have used 1953, because it comes from the agency's own data sheet.1 The registry added the tower to its listing in 2009.2
The agency sheet describes a 110-foot galvanized steel tower. The registry says it is 100 feet tall, with a 7-by-7 cab.1,2
Over the years, the registry says, staff came from either the Ouachita National Forest or state forestry.2 The agency sheet says the tower's observer retired in 2016 and lists the station as closed.1 The sources do not name any fire the tower spotted.
We could not confirm the tower's condition today. The registry lists it, but none of the sources we read describe a recent visit or inspection.2,1 It is unclear whether the sheet's closed status is still current, and we found no public visiting arrangement.1 We would not recommend climbing a lookout that the sheet lists as closed, so ask the Forest Service before going near it.
- Jadie Fire Tower, circa 1985, Oklahoma Forestry Services (Instagram post), https://www.instagram.com/p/DHIjsy2huHE/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Jadie Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/ok/jadie-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- Jadie, Forest Lookouts, https://centraluslookouts.weebly.com/jadie.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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Where sources disagree
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Sources disagree on whether it still stands.
- Firefinder research: Status unknown
- NHLR: Standing
Research (2026-10-09) gives unknown where the source records give standing. The page shows the researched status; please tell us if it is wrong.
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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, 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 821 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- Jadie (Forest Lookouts (centraluslookouts.weebly.com)) (opens another site)
- Jadie Fire Tower, circa 1985 (Oklahoma Forestry Services (Instagram post dated March 13, 2025)) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.