Mark D. Lowell
A pine forest almost hides the Mathews County tower from the highway.
“If, in Virginia, we may point with justifiable pride to our fire control record, our ability to do so is due in no small measure to the effective service rendered by our Lookout Watchmen.”
--Handbook for Lookout Watchmen, 1948
For many decades, tall steel towers stood guard over Virginia’s vast forests. Now, relics of a bygone day, these sentinels stand abandoned, on knolls, in fields or surrounded by forest. Their galvanized steel skeletons are still surprisingly robust more than 90 years after they were erected. Many of us drive past them every day with little or no awareness of their existence, remembered only by those who climbed them or yearned to do so. They are Virginia’s lookout or fire towers.
For over 100 years, the US Forest Service has been posting men and women in towers to watch for smoke. During fire season in Virginia, which begins March 1 and runs through mid-May, the region’s fire towers were manned from early morning until late afternoon. Once numbering in the thousands across the country, these lookout towers have now dwindled to just a few hundred.
Some are still active as watch posts; others have been converted into rental cabins, bed and breakfasts or torn down for scrap. Why pay a person to sit inside a seven-foot square cab when planes, helicopters, drones and satellites can spot a fire’s location within minutes? With an ever increasing population, there are more eyes on the ground. Only in the remotest areas do towers still provide the first line of defense against wildfires.
When the earliest settlers arrived in Virginia, they found a land that appeared to be one great forest. Approximately ninety percent of the English colonies were covered with dense growths of pine, cherry, hemlock, oak, chestnut, walnut and poplar. The forests were an invaluable resource, providing material for building, heating, and cooking, as well as a valuable item for overseas trade. At the same time, the dense forests that surrounded the new settlements were perceived as wild and threatening, harboring hostile natives and wild beasts. The forests were both coveted and feared. To cut them down was an obvious solution.
The once verdant forests of America quickly fell to the ax. The clearing of land made way for vast plantations of tobacco, cotton and food crops. America’s agrarian society spread ever westward, and by 1850 lumber production ranked first among all types of manufacturing in the United States. Between 1870 and 1910, most major forest stands of virgin timber had been cut.
In Virginia, following the Civil War, many of the fields once devoted to crops had been abandoned, creating an ideal habitat for loblolly pines. By 1869, Virginia was ranked twentieth among the states in lumber production. Pines meant money, but their resin and shed needles were also highly flammable. They were and are a forest fire waiting to happen. In 1910, a series of western wildfires tore across Washington, Idaho and Montana, killing 85 people and sending smoke as far as New England. The conflagrations cast wildfires as a national threat, and the fledgling US Forest Service was tasked with eliminating that risk. Lookout towers became the first line of defense.
In 1914, The Virginia General Assembly created the Office of the State Forester and appointed Chapin Jones to head the agency. The first lookout tower was constructed on Little Stone Mountain, and in 1917 the department began tracking fires. That year, 1460 forest fires burned over 300,000 acres in Virginia alone. By the end of their effective era in the mid-1980s, fire towers had been erected in every county in the state.
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In our region, galvanized steel towers were erected beginning in 1933 and completed in 1938, linking the counties of Gloucester, Mathews, Middlesex, James City, King and Queen and Essex via radio to the Department of Forestry’s headquarters in Tappahannock. Lancaster and Northumberland shared a single tower at Miskimon linked by radio to other towers further north and west. The towers were virtually identical. Ranging in height from 100 to 125 feet tall, they were constructed by the Aermotor Company of Chicago, IL for less than $2000 each.
Climbing 100 feet or more of stairs and landings once a day was arduous. To climb it twice in one day was tortuous but might be what was required when nature called. While in training to be state fire watchers in Fredericksburg, sister-in-laws, Dot Daniels and Ann Fary, found that the most essential information most female spotters wanted to know was what accommodations existed inside their cabs perched atop four legs. The best advice offered was to bring a lard can with a lid!
The climb up led to a trap door in the floor that provided access to the cab’s interior. On really windy days they could feel the tower sway. Thunderstorms would require a hasty retreat to the radio repeater shack at the tower base. Once on duty, the spotters remained alert for hours, but for Daniels and Fary it beat gathering pine cones for a living!
For several years, Daniels and Fary had followed the logging companies, gathering green pine cones to sell to the Forestry Department for two dollars a bushel. A tree nursery in New Kent would harvest the seeds from the cones to plant seedlings on acres of clear cut property. It was hard work, so when the women learned the Forest Service was looking for employees to man the Gloucester tower in Ark, they both applied.
Atop tower No. 2 the ladies worked seven days a week during fire season, alternating turns fire watching and babysitting their children at home. Communications between the towers in Gloucester, Mathews and Middlesex were maintained via radio. When a plume of smoke was spotted, Daniels or Fary would turn to their map and alidade in order to estimate the location and distance to the fire. The challenge was determining if it was a large fire far away or a small fire close by. Data exchanged between the towers would triangulate on the plume, alerting forestry officials to investigate.
“I always wanted to be the first one to spot a fire,” Daniels laughs. “I didn’t like another tower to spot smoke before I did. It was important to spot a fire quickly and call it in.” Retired Chief Forestry Warden Billy Hogge recalls, “the biggest cause of forest fires was by people burning trash and yard debris. Once the fire was extinguished, we would seek to determine the cause. Folks responsible for the fire, either through illegal burning, negligence or ignorance of the law were subject to a fine and possible damages.” Fary remembers the folks who would often try to burn the caterpillars out of their fruit trees and wind up setting their orchards on fire. The asparagus fields, burned annually to warm the soil and eliminate pests and weeds, also sparked numerous wildfires. “Once I spotted a plume a smoke, and it turned out to be from an illegal still!”
Fires occurred daily and were most often dispatched by the Forest Service or local volunteer fire departments. If the fire was large enough, fire plows from Tappahannock headquarters would be dispatched to cut large fire lines. Hogge recalls fighting one fire alongside a fellow forester that nearly cost their lives. “One windy day about a mile from the fire tower in Ark, a tree deep in the woods caught on fire and by the time we arrived and began creating a fire breaks around it, burning embers caused spot fires to jump up all around us. We no sooner created fire lines around the new fire when a spot fire would pop up somewhere else. We came close to being trapped and burned alive. We eventually brought it under control, but we were both scared.”
Today, only five fire towers remain standing in the region: Ark (Gloucester), completed in 1933, located at the junction of US Highway 17 and State Highway 217; Mathews, completed in 1938, can be seen surrounded by pine trees just off State Highway 14 1.5 miles east of Foster; Center Cross (Essex) located within Browne State Forest off Byrds Bridge Road; Toano (James City County), built in 1933, is located on a small knoll on Fire Tower Road; and Miskimon, completed in 1938 serving both Lancaster and Northumberland, is located on Highway 201 just north of the Miskimon Post Office. Towers in Middlesex and Shacklefords were demolished in 1969. For safety sake, the bottom steps and landings have been removed from most of the towers to discourage climbers. Others have been peppered with bullet holes or house colonies of pigeons.
Of the towers mentioned, the Mathews tower probably has the most infamous history associated with it. The 100-foot steel structure is located on highway Rt. 14 about one and one-half miles east of Foster, on a site donated by Mr. and Mrs. George A. Phillips of Mobjack. During a trial held on September 5, 1938, Mrs. Ethel Ashberry testified that her husband, Forrest, tried to force her to jump from the top of the fire tower. She said her screams attracted nearby highway workers who came to her rescue. Judge C.G. Jones ordered Ashberry held for grand jury action on a charge of felonious assault and attempting to maim, disfigure and kill his wife. A witness testified the victim suffered a fractured nose and numerous cuts and bruises. Her husband offered no defense at the hearing, but his lawyer stated Mr. Ashberry still loved his wife and meant no ill intent. It was the talk of the county for weeks!
In 2014, the Virginia Department of Forestry celebrated its 100th Anniversary as an agency of the Commonwealth. Today, two VDOF nurseries grow nearly 50 species of softwood and hardwood trees and sell millions of seedlings annually. The agency’s employees protect and conserve the state’s natural resources, ensure economic vitality of the forest industry and protect the lives and properties of Virginia landowners. The towers that remain standing have unsure futures, a sad legacy to all who served there.
Mark D. Lowell
Essex County’s fire tower is located inside Browne State Forest.
Special thanks to Dot Daniels, Ann Fary, Billy Hogge and Senior Area Forester Ken Sterner who made this story possible.