Quite a few of these fire tower rentals are in high demand, so you'd be wise to book your stay as soon as reservations are open. You can reserve a night or two in many of these lookout towers via have a look at available options with this handy Forest Fire Lookout Association list. Rentable fire lookout towers are scattered across the American West, and there’s now at least one in the East: Thorny Mountain Fire Tower in West Virginia’s Seneca State Forest. Lookout Tower Rentals: Spend a Night on Top of the World So in some cases hiking to a particular lookout tower is also a literary pilgrimage, maybe embellished by packing along Earth House Hold, Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems, Desolation Angels, The Journey Home, Grizzly Years, and other lookout-penned works. They include poet and wilderness thinker Gary Snyder, Beat visionary Jack Kerouac (inspired by Snyder to take a lookout job at Desolation Peak in the North Cascades), desert sage Edward Abbey, grizzly expert and wilderness warrior Doug Peacock, and A River Runs Through It author Norman Maclean, to name a few. Not a few famous writers have done stints serving as fire lookouts, enjoying the inspirational backdrop, meditative pace, and solitude of the work. Many fire watch towers were literally towers raised above surrounding woods others were essentially cabins perched on alpine ridges or summits. Lookouts used binoculars and Osborne Firefinders to detect and locate wildfires, being treated as they monitored their viewsheds through the course of a season to some spectacular panoramic wilderness scenery, dramatic lightning spectacles, wildlife viewing, and plenty of solitude. The Former Fire Lookout Site Register suggests more than 8,000 were in use in the country at one time, in every U.S. (A piece of fire-tower historical trivia: A lookout in the Siskiyou National Forest of southwestern Oregon spotted the smoke from an incendiary bomb launched by a Japanese submarine off the Pacific coast on September 9 th, 1942 with the intention of sparking a forest fire.) As fire suppression became basically nationwide policy in the early 20 th century, lookout towers proliferated-especially via Civilian Conservation Corps work during the Great Depression, and during World War II when the vantages also served as part of the Aircraft Warning Service. Photo by Cheryl Hill A Snapshot History of America’s Fire Lookout Towersįor decades, fire lookout towers (sometimes called firewatch or ranger towers) provided surveillance of wildfire activity in rough, rugged, often roadless country. Gold Butte Fire Tower in the Willamette National Forest, Oregon. Scores of decommissioned towers are available for rent, offering charming and generally pretty unforgettable overnight lodgings with invariably awesome views. Historical landmarks and symbols of our complicated and ever-evolving relationship with wildland blazes, the fire lookout towers of America’s wildernesses and semi wildernesses also make one-of-a-kind backcountry accommodations.
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