Fire lookout · Laurens County, South Carolina
Tip Top Tower
100-foot Aermotor LS-40 lookout on the Enoree Ranger District in Laurens County, SC, built around 1936; Forest Service use ended in the 1980s; upper deck closed.
- Standing
- Closed
- Verified
Closed
The site is closed to visitors. Upper deck not open to visitors per HikingWNC; the Register's 2020 visit found the lower steps removed to prevent access, the gate pulled off, and no-trespassing signs on the fence.
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?
- No
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- About a quarter-mile round trip from Tip Top Road, per HikingWNC; the upper deck is listed as closed.
- Staffing
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower100-foot Aermotor LS-40 tower with 7x7-foot metal cab and low hip roofThe design: Aermotor LS-40
- Built of
- SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1936
- Height
- 100 ft (30.5 m)
- Elevation
- 581 ft (177 m)
- Agency
- U.S. Forest Service
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Laurens County, South Carolina
- Coordinates
- 34.49722, −81.75333
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-sc-tip-top
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
- 1936 BuiltRegister Built field 1936; description says built around 1936Source: nhlr.org
- No record between 1936 and 2013
- 2013 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered January 27, 2013 as US 962, SC 16Source: nhlr.org
- 2020 Condition assessmentNHLR volunteer visit, September 8, 2020Source: 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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Tip Top Tower stands on the Enoree Ranger District of the Sumter National Forest in Laurens County, South Carolina, and the U.S. Forest Service administers it.1
The Register dates the tower to about 1936. It describes a 100-foot Aermotor LS-40 with a 7-by-7-foot metal cab under a low hip roof.1 The forest itself was set up in 1936 by presidential proclamation.2 The Forest Service's history of the forest says the Civilian Conservation Corps built fire towers there, although it does not name this one.2
The Register says the Forest Service used the tower until the 1980s.1 The available sources name no fires it watched and no staff who worked it.
A volunteer's visit in September 2020 found every window in the cab gone, along with some of the window frames. The lower steps had been taken away to block access, but the visitor saw signs of recent activity under the tower.1 The fence gate was off and lying to one side, still chained to the fence, which let visitors get in.1 The same visitor judged the tower to be in overall good shape and saw no-trespassing signs posted on the fence.1
A hiking guide lists the upper deck as closed to visitors, and gives a quarter-mile round trip from Tip Top Road to reach the tower.3 The available sources do not mention any rental.
Please stay outside the fence, and check with the Sumter National Forest before any visit.
- Tip Top Tower, National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org), http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/sc/tip-top-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- History of the Enoree and Long Cane Ranger Districts, Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r08/francismarionsumter/natural-resources/arch-cultural/history-enoree-and-long-cane-ranger (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
- 011 - Tip Top Fire Tower (SC), HikingWNC, https://hikingwnc.com/011-tip-top-fire-tower-sc/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
Photos
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Sources
- National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, status, register numbers, agency, ownership, 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- eastern US (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site) Gave us: type, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, agency, access, 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 962 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- History of the Enoree and Long Cane Ranger Districts (Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests, U.S. Forest Service) (opens another site)
- 011 - Tip Top Fire Tower (SC) (HikingWNC) (opens another site)
- Tip Top (easternuslookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- Satellite view (hillmap.com) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.