Catskill Mountain fire towers

The Catskill Mountain fire towers were constructed to facilitate forest fire prevention and control in the Catskill Mountains of New York. 23 towers were built between 1908 and 1950. The towers fell into disuse by the 1970s as fire spotting from airplanes became more effective, and were gradually decommissioned. The Hunter Mountain Fire Tower was the last to be taken out of service in 1990. Most of the towers have been dismantled, but the five remaining towers have been renovated and opened to the public for observation: the aforementioned Hunter Mountain tower, the Balsam Lake Mountain Fire Observation Station, Overlook Mountain Tower in Woodstock, Tremper Mountain Fire Tower in the town of Denning and Red Hill Fire Tower in the town of Shandaken.

History

Catskill fire protection before towers

When the Catskill Park was created in 1885, one of the state's earliest missions was the control and suppression of forest fires which had long ravaged the land and damaged local crops and property. Wardens were hired to patrol railroad lines, where stray ashes from steam engines often ignited surrounding brush, and investigate reports of fires started by logging or quarrying operations on state land (illegal under the legislation that created New York's Forest Preserve, now Article 14 of the state constitution).[1]

The FFGC (Forest, Fish and Game Commission, the DEC's predecessor) was understaffed and unable to focus on fire prevention. Severe fires during droughts in 1903 and 1908 caused thousands of dollars in damages and led to public calls for better fire control efforts. In December 1908, FFGC head James Whipple sought advice from agencies in other states. His counterpart in Maine, E.E. Ring, recommended the use of strategically placed observation towers, stating that "one man located at a station will do far more effectual work in discovering and locating fires than a hundred men already patrolling."[1]

Wooden tower installed at Hunter Mountain in 1909

Tower construction

An informal system of observation towers which already existed on some summits provided excellent places to station the first trained observers, who could see vast portions of the range and report the location of new fires quickly via dedicated telephone lines. The area around Hunter had historically been very fire-prone,[2] due to heavy logging (less than one square mile or 2.6 square kilometres of virgin forest remains on the mountain[3]) and lightning strikes. The following year, forest rangers built the first Hunter Mountain fire tower, a 40-foot (12.2 m) structure made from three trees, on level ground near the summit. It was one of the first fire lookout towers in the Catskills. Observers stood on an open platform and at first had to live in a nearby tent, until a cabin was built.[1]

Abandonment and revival

In 1996, Hunter and the other four towers were added to the Historic Lookout Register, and then to the National Register the following year.[1] Local committees raised money for their repair, and in 1999 the tower on Overlook Mountain was the first to be reopened to the public.

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gollark: That's horrible.#
gollark: processor : 0vendor_id : AuthenticAMDcpu family : 23model : 1model name : AMD Ryzen 3 1200 Quad-Core Processorstepping : 1microcode : 0x800111ccpu MHz : 3410.279cache size : 512 KBphysical id : 0siblings : 4core id : 0cpu cores : 4apicid : 0initial apicid : 0fpu : yesfpu_exception : yescpuid level : 13wp : yesflags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw skinit wdt tce topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext perfctr_llc mwaitx cpb hw_pstate sme ssbd sev vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 rdseed adx smap clflushopt sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves clzero irperf xsaveerptr arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold avic v_vmsave_vmload vgif overflow_recov succor smcabugs : sysret_ss_attrs null_seg spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypassbogomips : 6989.20TLB size : 2560 4K pagesclflush size : 64cache_alignment : 64address sizes : 43 bits physical, 48 bits virtualpower management: ts ttp tm hwpstate eff_freq_ro [13] [14]
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References
  1. Podskosch, Martin (2000). Fire Towers of the Catskills: Their History and Lore. Fleischmanns, New York: Purple Mountain Press. ISBN 1-930098-10-3.
  2. Kudish, Michael (2000). The Catskill Forest: A History. Fleischmanns, New York: Purple Mountain Press. pp. 116, 120. ISBN 1-930098-02-2. ...because Hunter Mountain has had so many fires, I consider it the interior fire capital of the Catskills ... There have been more burns around Hunter Mountain than anywhere else in the Catskills except along the Escarpment and in the lower Esopus Basin near Phoenicia.
  3. "Hunter Mountain Fire Tower". Archived from the original on 2007-11-26. Retrieved 2007-10-09.
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