TBT Features Mt. Hale Fire Tower

[Tom Rankin]

Every Thursday, the Forest Fire Lookout Association features a Throw Back Thursday (#TBT) picture of a fire tower from back in the day.

Here is Mt. Hale.

https://www.facebook.com/forestfirelookout (Scroll down)

The tower is long gone but there is some still evidence remaining, as you can see from Laurie's follow up picture.

Does anyone remember this tower, or have other pictures?

An old thread related to this: https://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?43285-4Ks-with-Structures-(Past-or-Present)

 

[peakbagger]

Looks like twin to the Kearsage North Tower or the wreckage of the Bemis Tower. The FS had standard design manuals for fire towers and this was a standard design used in the whites and elsewhere. I could speculate that the larger cab designs like this one were only used where there was access to the site with heavy equipment to tow the components up. Bemis, Hale, Carter Dome, Garfield and Pine Mtn all had similar design. The Hale firewardens route and the Garfield Trial are good examples of the temporary access roads that were built. In less accessible sites they went with the smaller cabs and towers as I expect it was easier to lug the components up. I don't think this was universal as Signal Mountain and Whitcomb both had access roads built to them yet used the smaller cab and Maine Forest Service tended to stick with smaller cabs on many of their towers. Some trivia is that some of the early windmill makers where the suppliers of the actual tower framing. I think Jacobs and American Aeromotive were both big suppliers.

Mt Hale summit is deserving of some natural event to clear the growth off as the views are hard to beat. Given the resurgence of the high elevation spruces and firs after the acid rain dieback and the warmer climate shifting plants upslope I expect that that only a natural event is the only hope to get a view back as the trend is these spruces and firs are just growing taller. Natural events can happen, when I first started hiking Mt Tom was entirely viewless, a couple of blowdown events have now opened up partial views.

 

[evilhanz]

Here is an interior photo:


and one showing the road:

 

[peakbagger]

That road photo is great. I have seen references to the roads being built with small John Deere Bulldozers, not much bigger than a current ATV
http://www.tractordata.com/farm-tractors/009/0/3/9039-john-deere-bo-lindeman.html

 

[TJsName]

The wildest part is seeing the summit treeless - that's wild! I wonder what the summit was like before it was logged (how tall were the 'old growth' trees at that elevation?).