TheCatskill Mountain fire towers were constructed to facilitateforest fire prevention and control in theCatskill Mountains ofNew 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. TheHunter 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 aforementionedHunter Mountain tower, theBalsam Lake Mountain Fire Observation Station,Overlook Mountain Tower inWoodstock,Tremper Mountain Fire Tower in the town ofShandaken andRed Hill Fire Tower in the town ofDenning.
When theCatskill Park was created in 1885, one of the state's earliest missions was the control and suppression offorest fires which had long ravaged the land and damaged local crops and property. Wardens were hired to patrol railroad lines, where stray ashes fromsteam 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'sForest Preserve, now Article 14 of the state constitution).[1]
The FFGC (Forest, Fish and Game Commission, theDEC's predecessor) was understaffed and unable to focus onfire prevention. Severe fires duringdroughts 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 inMaine, 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]
An informal system ofobservation towers which already existed on some summits provided excellent places to station the firsttrained observers, who could see vast portions of the range and report the location of new fires quickly viadedicated 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 ofvirgin forest remains on the mountain[3]) andlightning 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]
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] Localcommittees raised money for their repair, and in 1999 the tower onOverlook Mountain was the first to be reopened to the public.The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development has worked in partnership withthe New York State Department of Environmental Conservation since the early 1990s to maintain the remaining 5 historic Catskills fire towers (Hunter, Balsam Lake, Tremper, Overlook, and Red Hill), and to interpret them seasonally for hikers and visitors.
...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 lowerEsopus Basin nearPhoenicia.
