page_title: Balsam Lake Mountain Fire Observation Station
section_title: 1909–1970: Public use
hierarchical_section_title: Balsam Lake Mountain Fire Observation Station / History / 1909–1970: Public use
caption_attribution_description: English: Observer's cabin at Balsam Lake Mountain fire tower, Hardenburgh, NY, USA
context_page_description: The Balsam Lake Mountain Fire Observation Station is located at the summit of the mountain of that name in the Town of Hardenburgh, New York, United States. It comprises a steel frame fire lookout tower, the observer's cabin and privy and the jeep road to the complex.
  Balsam Lake Mountain, the westernmost of the Catskill High Peaks, was the site of the first fire lookout tower in New York in 1887, when a nearby sportsmen's club built it to protect their lands below the mountain. It was later taken over by the state, which built several towers culminating in the current one. The tower was manned until 1988.
  After being closed for much of the 1990s, the tower was proposed for demolition as one of five remaining on state-owned Forest Preserve land in the Catskill Park. Hikers and local residents rallied to save it, and after the state's Department of Environmental Conservation changed its mind, it was restored and reopened. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, the highest-elevation property in Ulster County to be listed.
context_section_description: Following destructive fires during severe droughts earlier in the decade, FFGC supervisor Hames Whipple had turned to towers as a means of fire detection, since the previous methods of ground patrols had not been successful. He had done so after consulting with E.E. Ring, manager of Maine's state forestry agency, who had put up nine at locations around that state. "In my opinion," Ring wrote him, "one man located at a station will do far more effectual work in discovering and locating fires than a hundred men already patrolling."
  The Balsam Lake tower joined those already operated by the state in the Catskills on Belleayre and Hunter mountains. Because of its height compared to the peaks to its west in Delaware County, it offered an excellent vantage point from which to spot fires in that area as well as its immediate surroundings in Ulster County. Views were unobstructed for 12–18 miles (19–29 km) in all directions.
  After taking over, the FFGC spent $38 ($1,100 in modern dollars) repairing the tower. The state also added a dedicated telephone line along a truck road it built connecting to Mill Brook Road at the north so the observers stationed at the tower would not have to hike to the tower from the club's very remote location at the end of a long road up an isolated river valley. In its first year, according to the commission's annual report, observers spotted fires as far away as Fallsburg and Liberty in Sullivan County and in the Shawangunks, far to the south and southeast.
  In 1918, the state replaced the crude shelter for observers, described by one as a "shanty", with a more permanent cabin. The next year the open wooden tower the club had built was replaced with a 47 ¹⁄₂-foot (14.5 m) Aermotor steel tower. Whether this is the current tower is not clear. The Historic Lookout Register says it was in turn replaced with the current tower in 1930, but records from the Conservation Commission, which the FFGC had become by then, show no expenditure for a new tower. DEC's webpage for the Wild Forest, however, gives 1930 as the construction date for the current tower.
  Mike Todd, the observer from the time the cabin was constructed until 1947, was sometimes able to spot fires as far away as Northeastern Pennsylvania, many miles to the southwest. During his tenure he claimed to have shot over 900 porcupines chewing on the cabin to prevent damage. He also took black bears around the tower and on his drive up.
  In the early 1960s the state replaced the 1918 cabin with the current one. Unlike older observer's cabins in the Forest Preserve, the one on Balsam Lake lacks a porch. This was the most significant change to any aspect of the fire tower complex after the construction of the current tower. During that time the observers were busy. A drought in 1962 led to many fires, and similar conditions the following year resulted in Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordering the closing of the Forest Preserve in 1963 and again for short periods the following year.
  Another observer, Larry Baker, ended a search and rescue operation in 1968. He found some missing Boy Scouts from Long Island who had gotten separated from their group, a short distance from the tower at the lean-to near the south end of the summit. That coincided with the beginning of the end of the era in which the fire towers were an essential component of the region's fire control system. Since the 1950s, better public education about the causes of forest fires, along with improved local fire departments, had led to a decline in fires. Aerial observers, who could cover the whole region several times a day, were becoming a more cost-effective way to detect fires, and the state slowly began closing the towers down and dismantling them.
caption: Observer's cabin
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