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Fire lookout · Berkeley County, South Carolina

Bethera Tower Site

Berkeley County, SC site of a lookout first erected in the 1930s and moved to Witherbee in 1952; the register says only footers remain here.

Moved: The structure was moved. The map shows where it stands now; the timeline says where it came from. Tower moved to the Witherbee Ranger Station in 1952; the register says only footers remain at this site

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
Moved
Type
Cab on a tower100-foot LS-40 Aermotor steel tower with 7 x 7 ft metal cab (the structure later moved to Witherbee)The design: Aermotor LS-40
Built of
Not recorded
Built
Unknown
Height
Unknown
Elevation
110 ft (34 m)
Agency
Francis Marion National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Berkeley County, South Carolina
Coordinates
33.20683, −79.78242
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-sc-bethera

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.

The structure was moved. This view is from the position Firefinder shows for this record, at a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 3.1 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. 1952 MovedTower moved from the Bethera site to the Witherbee Ranger Station on the Francis Marion National ForestSources: firetower.org, nhlr.org, easternuslookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1952 and 2009
  3. 2009 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterDate registered per FFLOS detail page: September 11, 2009Source: FFLOS register entry
  4. TodayMovedThe structure was moved. The map shows where it stands now; the timeline says where it came from. When it came down is not recorded.

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 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

The Bethera site is in Berkeley County, South Carolina, inside the Francis Marion National Forest.1,2 The lookout that first stood there went up with a ground house in the 1930s.3 The register counts it among the several lookouts the Forest Service used for fixed-point fire detection in its early years.3

The tower that stood at Bethera is the 100-foot Aermotor steel tower with a 7-by-7-foot metal cab that now stands at Witherbee.3 In 1952 it was moved to the Witherbee Ranger Station on the Francis Marion National Forest.3,2 The Former Fire Lookout Sites register and the Forest Lookouts site both give 1952 for the move.1,2

According to the register, only the footers are left at the Bethera site.1 The register gives no date for that remark, and we found no newer description of the site.1

The tower itself is the one now known as the Witherbee lookout. The Forest Service used it actively until 1989, and the register listed it on December 1, 1998.3 A news story, which our copy does not date, says the Witherbee tower is one of two Forest Service lookouts in the Francis Marion Forest that are still standing.4

The register lists the Witherbee station as a Forest Service site, and it does not describe public access to it.3 Please ask the Forest Service before going near the station, and do not climb the tower.

  1. Bethera Tower Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/sc/bethera-tower-site/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Bethera, Forest Lookouts, https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/bethera.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Witherbee Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/sc/witherbee-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. S.C. Archaeologist Calls for Preservation of Fire Lookout Towers, Firefighter Nation, https://www.firefighternation.com/fire-leadership/s-c-archaeologist-calls-for-preservation-of-fire-lookout-towers/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, status, register numbers, dates, links Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) Gave us: type, agency, 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
  3. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, 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.