One sunny summer weekend when I was fifteen, my dad, sister, and I took a camping trip in the Adirondacks. We loaded the car and drove north from our home in Oneonta, New York. We had no particular destination, but drove along amiably until we reached a campground near Indian Lake in the southern Adirondacks. We pitched our tent and wandered over to the lake. We decided against a swim because the sun was beginning to set and the waters were chilly. We asked one of the men who worked at the campground if he had any suggestions as to what mountain we should climb the next day. He offered Panther Mountain. We thanked him and went on our way but privately scoffed at this one mile hike. “We came to the Adirondacks to hike a real mountain,” we told each other.

“Those fire towers saved this area.”

The next day, we drove to Snowy Mountain. The hike was long and laborous, though pride would have kept us from telling you so that day, had you asked. The summit seemed to be just outside our grasp; we kept thinking that it would be just beyond that bend or just after this climb. The chase was worth our efforts, though, for at the top we found a fire tower. We wasted no time climbing it, taking in our just rewards for tackling the mountain. The view was magnificent. Below us, lakes shimmered between the mountains like tinsel strewn about on a lush, rumpled green carpet. We were mesmerized–then and long after–for the privilege of viewing the forest as the birds do.

Fire towers have a place in Adirondack history since the early twentieth century. At one time, more than 50 towers were scattered through these forests. Now, the fate of many has been dismantlement.

“Those fire towers saved this area,” says Gretna Longware, a member of Friends of Hurricane Mountain Fire Tower. “In the early 1900s, wildfires ravaged through the area and if it weren't for the DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation] building fire towers and having rangers, we wouldn't have the beautiful forests to look at today.”

Photo courtesy of Credit Marty Podskoch, author, and Tony Sansevero, artist Marty Podskoch has written two books about Adirondack fire towers.

The main culprit of the fires that devastated tens of thousands of acres was the railroad. “There was a lot of slash and debris left over from the logging. As the trains went through, they would be burning coal. Sparks would fly in the air, land on the dry material and start fires,” explains Marty Podskoch, author of Adirondack Fire Towers.

Towers were built in response to a public outcry of actions being executed to protect the Adirondacks.

“At first, they were wooden towers with open platforms on the top,” said Podskoch. “In 1916, they started buying steel towers. They would have horses drag up the steel and they would have to anchor them [the towers] into the bedrock.”

According to Podskoch, observers manned the towers during the fire season, which ran from about April to November. If they spotted smoke, they would send word down the mountain by means of the open telephone lines that were strung from tree to tree for up to seven miles.

“The observer would have crude maps on which they would plot the smoke and figure out where the fire was. Then they'd call the forest ranger. The ranger would then get a group of men to fight the fire,” notes Podskoch. “People were able to get to the fire a lot faster because they could find the fire at its beginning stages.”

The fire towers and their vigilant observers protected the forest in this way for over half a century. In 1971, however, the decline of these historic towers began. The Department of Environmental Conservation started surveying the land for fires by planes.

“Sometimes they are torn down if they are not being maintained, they fall into disrepair and they become dangerous.”

Podskoch explains, “They would send up the airplanes just when there was a threat of fire. There were 54 state towers in the Adirondacks and there were three private towers. Gradually, they kept closing these towers until there were only four towers left [in operation] in the state. Finally, in 1990 all those towers were closed.”

According to Steve Engelhart, the executive director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage, “In the 1980s and 1990s, the Department of Environmental Conservation came to see fire towers as being obsolete because of changes in surveillance, communication and habit. People actually learned to be less careless [concerning fire] in the forest.”

A number of towers have been torn down. “Sometimes they are torn down if they are not being maintained, they fall into disrepair and they become dangerous,” explains Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club.

However, there is a movement to restore the Adirondack fire towers. “Fire towers are being restored for two main reasons,” says Engelhart. “One is that people have come to have great affection for them over the years. They see them as being handsome, simple structures that have a historic significance. Secondly, they understand that fire towers present an opportunity to teach people about what they are seeing when they go to the top of a mountain.”

Photo courtesy of Conservation Report of 191 7 The Mt. Adams fire tower under construction in 1917.

One tower whose fate is currently being determined is the Mount Adams fire tower, located in the southwestern section of Essex County. The tower, built in 1917, is currently owned by the Open Space Institute, a non-for-profit land acquisition organization.

The president of the Open Space Institute, Joe Martins, says that his organization has an application before the park agency. If the Open Space Institute gets the subdivision approval from the Adirondack Park Agency they will sell the state a seven-thousand-acre track that surrounds the fire tower. However, they will retain ownership of the fire tower and be responsible for its upkeep. The tower needs to be upgraded, making it safe for public use.

“We just recently received a completion notice from the DEC. That starts the review process, which could last anywhere from a couple of months to five or six depending on whether they have a public hearing. But we are hopeful that this goes before the agency as early as April,” states Martins.

If all goes smoothly with the Open Space Institute plans, the Mt. Adams fire tower will stand proudly watching over the forest below for many years to come.

Do you think the Adirondack fire towers should be torn down or restored?

“The Adirondacks are not really a fire ecology. The Adirondacks are traditionally very wet in nature. We receive an average of around forty inches of precipitation a year. The precipitation is spread out fairly evenly throughout the year so that generally the Adirondacks do not burn. We do occasionally get lightening strikes on top of the upper slopes that tend to dry out quicker and we do get occasionally ground fires but nothing catastrophic like in the early 1900's where hundreds of thousands of acres burned. It's very different today the Adirondacks are often referred to as the Hespesto forest. Hespestus (SP) is a material that doesn't burn so that is sometimes a nickname for the forest.”

-Tom Martin, Regional Forester for DEC Region Five

Fire Towers Left Standing in the Northern Adirondacks *

*As of 2005