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Fire lookout · White County, Tennessee

Doyle (Milksick Mountain) Tower Site

Also known as Milksick Mountain

White County, TN tower on Milksick Mountain, run by the Tennessee Division of Forestry; only concrete footings remained by April 2018.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Only concrete footings remained as of April 2018; no later description of the site found

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower50-foot metal cab Aermotor towerThe design: Aermotor
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
Unknown
Height
Unknown
Elevation
1,671 ft (509 m)
Agency
Tennessee Division of Forestry
Land
Unknown
Location
White County, Tennessee
Coordinates
35.86095, −85.44422
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-tn-doyle-milksick-mountain

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its 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.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 3.2 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. 2018 EventOnly concrete footings remained as of April 2018Source: firetower.org
  2. 2019 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered February 19, 2019 as US 1738, TN 4Source: firetower.org
  3. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. 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.

Milksick Mountain sits in White County, Tennessee, and the register puts the tower site at 1,671 feet (509 meters).1 Local history and legend tie the name to early settlers who saw sickness and deaths follow drinking milk from the mountain's grazing cattle.1 The mountain was eventually fenced to keep cattle off, after the harm mounted.1

The lookout that stood here was a 50-foot tower with a metal cab, an Aermotor tower administered by the Tennessee Division of Forestry.1

The register records the tower as still standing at least until the early 1990s.1 A Tennessee lookout-tower list marks the Milksick Mountain tower as removed.2 That list gives the elevation as 1,640 feet, which does not match the register's 1,671 feet.2,1

By April 2018, the register describes only the concrete footings.1 The Former Fire Lookout Sites register added the site in February 2019.1 No source describes the site since then, or says whether the public can reach it, so access is unknown. At that last description, no tower stood there to climb.1

  1. Doyle (Milksick Mountain) Tower Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/tn/doyle-milksick-mountain-tower-site/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Tennessee Lookout Towers, tnlandforms.us, https://tnlandforms.us/towers/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

April 2018 photo
April 2018 photo (2018)Photo: Victoria Oliver, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, type, what it is built of, status, register numbers, agency, dates, photos, 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. tnlandforms.us fire lookout towers (Tom Dunigan) -- GA, NC, TN Gave us: 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. 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.