FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sevier County, Tennessee

Cove Mountain Tower

A 1935 CCC-built steel lookout on Cove Mountain in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, now an NPS air-quality station that visitors cannot enter.

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Restricted access

Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. Summit reachable on foot; hikers are not allowed into the tower (per the Hiking in the Smokys guide); the NPS uses the tower for air quality monitoring

Can you climb it?
No
Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Reached by the Laurel Falls Trail and Cove Mountain Trail; the tower itself is closed to hikers
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Cab on a tower60-ft steel Aermotor tower with 7x7 ft metal cabThe design: Aermotor
Built of
Steel
Built
1935
Height
60 ft (18.3 m)
Elevation
4,077 ft (1,243 m)
Agency
National Park Service
Land
Federal land
Location
Sevier County, Tennessee
Coordinates
35.69664, −83.60980
Registers
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-tn-cove-mountain

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 3.1 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. 1935 BuiltBuilt by the CCC as a 60-ft steel Aermotor towerSources: nhlr.org, hikinginthesmokys.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 2007
  3. 2007 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered March 19, 2007; nominated by Peter BarrSource: nhlr.org
  4. 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 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Cove Mountain Tower stands on the summit of Cove Mountain, inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Sevier County, Tennessee.1,2 The Civilian Conservation Corps built it in 1935 as a 60-foot steel Aermotor tower with a 7-by-7-foot metal cab.1,2

It was a fire-watch tower until it was no longer used for monitoring forest fire threats. The Park Service has since turned it into an air quality monitoring station, and park staff service its instruments.2,3 According to the Park Service, the second level holds a compact room where instruments measure air quality and weather.3

Hikers can reach the summit on foot, following the Laurel Falls Trail to the Cove Mountain Trail, but they are not allowed into the tower.2 The register gives a registration date of March 19, 2007, with the nomination by Peter Barr.1

I could not find a record of who staffed the tower as a lookout, or when it changed over to air quality work. The hiking guide gives its height as 60 feet, but an NPS profile describes the top as 80 feet in the air, and I could not reconcile the two.2,3

Keep to the public trails, and do not try to climb the tower.2

  1. Cove Mountain Tower, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/tn/cove-mountain-tower/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  2. Cove Mountain - Hike to Cove Mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains, Hiking in the Smokys, https://hikinginthesmokys.com/cove-mountain/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
  3. NPS Profile: Air above & beyond the Smokies, National Park Service, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, https://home.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/dff509-focusnps1.htm (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩

Photos

Photo of Cove Mountain Tower
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Cove Mountain Tower
Photo: Brian Stansberry, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0 · 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, 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
  2. tnlandforms.us fire lookout towers (Tom Dunigan) -- GA, NC, TN Gave us: register numbers, links tnlandforms.us (Tom Dunigan) · No licence stated; facts only (coordinates, county, elevation, NGS/GFC/BLL register cross-references, status where given). · 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. Wikidata -- US fire lookout towers (Q748998 and subclasses) Gave us: photos, links Wikidata · CC0 1.0 (Wikidata). Images keep their own Commons licence/credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  5. 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.