“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
According to all reports, lots of people, visitor and resident alike, did just that this summer. Climbing mountains with fire towers remaining on their summits was especially popular as an outdoor activity. Perhaps the following brief fire tower historical overview will be of interest to readers.
Let’s begin with the late 1960s when a decision was made in Albany that fire towers were obsolete, and starting in early 1970, the state began to close them. On the surface, it was a valid decision. Experiments with air surveillance, for example, had proven not only effective but also less costly. It was quickly determined that one flight pattern could cover an area that formerly required four or five towers to view the same area. In addition, the planes would need to be hired only on extreme hazard days, further reducing the cost of fire detection, a saving that was estimated by DEC officials to approach $250,000.
Thus in 1971, the DEC made out contracts for 22 flights that would cover the Adirondack region. Pilots like Herb Helms of Long Lake, Tom Duflo of New Bremen, Bus Bird of Sixth Lake and Jim Payne of Seventh Lake were hired to fly some of the routes using mostly Cessna seaplanes like the 206, 185 and 172 models. The same year that the air contracts were let, 61 fire towers were closed. Some of the towers of local interest and the year they were closed follow: Ampersand in 1970; Adams (Tahawus), Kempshall (Long Lake), Tooley Pond (Cranberry Lake) and Mount Morris in 1971; Azure (Santa Clara), Whiteface, Goodnow (Newcomb) in 1979; Arab Mountain in 1988. Two of the last to be closed were Blue Mountain and St. Regis in 1990 (list compiled by Marty Podskach, Adirondack Fire Towers, 2003).
Other towers that were not abandoned were removed. Some were reassembled and relocated on museum sites and DEC demonstration areas. Others cited for removal were simply dynamited or cut down with chainsaws equipped with carbide blades. Some of the latter, such as on Catamount, Moosehead and Electra, were left practically where they dropped. Today, years later, they are only slowly being obscured – their steel components surrendering to the succession of forest cover. Or, as in the case of the Ampersand tower, the remains are lying among the rocks of that mountain’s north side. The helicopter assigned to remove it lost its sling load. I would hasten to point out that other towers, particularly those that were relocated, were treated more kindly (and legally). Various DEC personnel spent long, hard and dangerous hours in taking down the towers, some 76 feet high, bolt by bolt.
Looking back at the history of the fire towers, it is clear that the early DEC position was to close the fire towers, and in terms of cost effectiveness at least, it could be considered a prudent decision. In a 1989 study, only 4 percent, or 99, of the 2,383 fires statewide were reported by fire tower observers. That program cost $225,000 a year. Closing the towers became an easy determination – a slam-dunk, as today’s youth would describe it. Except – hold on – what part of the equation was overlooked? Yep, you guessed it. Public indignation!
Few at the state level recognized that people had such a strong feeling for “their” fire tower. Here were childhood memories – a legacy of a romantic part of our history when the observer in his puttee-clad leggings and forest-green uniform would give you a card certifying “you have climbed xyz mountain.” And the memory of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, comradeship, mountain spring water, stellar views, carefree youth and uncles, aunts, cousins and parents, now gone but not forgotten, who helped you climb that first mountain.
The plea to save some of the fire towers and not let them be lost as an important legacy of our past was loud and clear: STOP! That was the message and the DEC, sensitive to such concentrated and vocal objections, responded. They have been a valuable partner in the restoration efforts carried on by groups such as the Friends of Mt. Arab, the Azure Mountain Friends and current effort of people like these who want to save Owl’s Head tower in Long Lake, etc.
Still remaining for inclusion in the history books is the chapter on which fire towers will remain. The access to Loon Lake’s mountain near Onchiota is across private lands. Lyon Mountain is also private with little support to save the tower.
The fate of these towers is questionable. Hurricane, near Keene Valley, already has its lower stairs removed – it will most likely be taken down. St. Regis is on the list, but its removal is controversial, as many people want it saved. The tower on Mt. Adams seems almost certain to be removed. It is located on lands formerly owned by the National Lead Company. Purchased recently by the Open Space Institute with a potential transfer to ownership by New York State, it will become nonconforming under wilderness classification guidelines. I’ve looked at that mountain’s severely steep profile many times over the years while driving along the old Tahawus Club road on the way to the various trailheads at the Upper Works. Yet, I had never climbed to its summit at near 4,000 feet elevation. With the towers removal a certainty, I decided I’d better hit the trail.
As mentioned, the tower and the trail leading to it had been abandoned in 1971. Thirty-two years of neglect and poundings from windstorms have made this a trailess peak in the best definition of that term. It starts out easy on the trail to Hanging Spears Falls. It soon crosses the fast-flowing Opalescent River on a cabled suspension bridge and then quickly the swampy outlet of Lake Jimmy on a floating bridge of corduroy logs. What a challenge it must have been to log this place.
The point where my map showed the old Adams Trail bearing off to the N.E. was only a bulldozed log landing, the trail completely lost in an overgrowth of second-growth and berry bushes laden with ripe fruit.
Taking a bearing from the map, I plunged through the heavy cover, ever so often discovering the imprints of an old skid road heading in the right direction until it turned on an old haul road that ran along a contour at right angles to my bearing. The route now went straight up 1,800 vertical feet in less than two miles distance. Jumbled masses of fallen logs forced me onto the ledge drop-off of a steep mountain stream. Gone were the several ladders described in an early guidebook. The ascent became an unrelenting struggle that only ended when I came out on the narrow flat of dwarfed balsam that was steadily closing in on the summit, soon to engulf it completely.
There is no view from Adams unless you climb the tower. Therefore, I carefully ascended the stairs until finally, just before the trap door leading to the ruined tower camp, I discovered that the entire stair landing was missing, which halted my progress. The protective grids of wire along the stairs were also gone, which only added to my feeling of insecurity as the tower swayed in the wind. Holding tight to a steep support, I looked out at the view. It was pure magic – a wild, almost savage, scene of surrounding peaks rising straight to the sky like inverted ice cream cones.
Vaporous mist, not unlike the steam from a sugarhouse evaporator, rose from the forest basin below and was wisped away by the strong wind currents. It was as wild and memorable scene as could be imagined.
The tower on Adams has stood strong and noble since 1918. For almost 100 years, it has resisted gale-force winds, snow and ice, its structural integrity a tribute to its builder, the Aeromotor Windmill Company. However, it will soon disappear, the victim of both neglect and changing times. The mountain will continue to be seldom visited and will represent a true symbol, a sentinel of all that is really wild in the Adirondacks. A lonely place that will become once again a place “when silence was and not a word.”