Wooden Tower Puzzle

While scanning and cataloging the 1000+ photographs in the Rap-Shaw Club archive I came across eleven images labelled either Bald Mountain or Bald Rock. These photos all appear to have been taken between 1902 and 1916 when the club’s camp was located at Witchhopple Lake. Nine of the views show typical panoramas of forest and lakes but two of them feature a distinctive wooden tower on an open summit. Unlike most wooden surveying or fire towers of that era, this tower was built around a central post, there was no ladder, the platform at the top was minimal and the bracing horizontal rather than diagonal.

My first thought was that this mystery tower might be an early version of one of the known wooden fire towers built either on the Bald Mountain overlooking Fourth Lake, now officially known as Rondax, or on the Bald Mountain in Lewis County in the Oswegatchie drainage or even possibly the wooden tower on Stillwater Mountain. I consulted with Fred Knauf and Jim Fox, two fire tower historians familiar with these towers. They checked their archives and concluded that the mystery tower in my photograph did not match any of the early towers on those three summits.

 

My second thought was that the mystery tower may have been built in the later decades of the nineteenth century by one of the surveying crews under the direction of Verplanck Colvin. Colvin survey teams are known to have worked near Witchhopple Lake, but a review of the Colvin archive does not show they ever built a tower anywhere in that vicinity.

 

A third theory was advanced by Fred Knauf. About thirty years ago, Fred interviewed retired Conservation Department and DEC Ranger Bob Bailey. When Fred asked him how many fire towers were located in the Adirondacks at the beginning of the force's work in 1909, he said that he thought that in the early days there could have been as many as 2,400 towers standing throughout the Adirondack Park, many left over from Colvin's survey teams. Fred said he thought that old wooden fire observation towers similar to the one in my picture had once existed in a number of locations along the Beaver River.

 

I note that the state had hired fire wardens prior to 1909, but they were only paid when fighting fires. These first fire wardens did not get paid to build fire towers and accordingly there were no established Forest Fire Observation Stations, as they were called, prior to 1909. Some of the first Fire Observation Stations used old Colvin survey towers but initially most of the Fire Observation Stations had no structures on them until the fire wardens had the time and resources to build them.

 

That the mystery tower was an early structure used for fire observation made sense to me. The first full-time state fire warden in the Beaver River area, Dave Conkey, was hired in 1909. He had a cabin at Burnt Lake near the south end of the Red Horse Trail, not all that far from Witchhopple Lake. It seemed plausible to me that Conkey built the mystery tower some time shortly after 1909. 

 

I felt satisfied with this explanation until I received an email from Paul Hartmann, a retired Forest Ranger and former District Ranger for Herkimer County. Paul compared the picture of my mystery tower with photos in his extensive collection and concluded that the tower may have been built by a survey team of the US Geological Survey as part of their 1900 - 01 field work to create the 1903 Big Moose Quadrangle map that includes the Witchhopple Lake area. 

 

Paul has a manual from 1910 showing the configuration of USGS towers. They generally had an upright central post with poles attached to hold square panels. That matches the tower in my picture fairly well. Further support for this theory comes from a photo Paul sent me showing the USGS survey tower of roughly the same age and design built at Bear Mt. near Cranberry Lake.

I recently discussed this whole thing with retired DEC Ranger Terry Perkins. Terry’s territory encompassed all the state land surrounding Stillwater Reservoir including the Witchhopple Lake area. Terry told me he had explored the top of the ridge where the mystery tower may have once stood. He confirmed that there is a bare rock area on top of the ridge and that he had found marks on the rock consistent with attachments for a tower. He agreed that Paul Hartmann’s USGS theory was highly plausible.

 

Based on all of the above, I now believe that the mystery tower was most likely constructed by surveyors of the USGS. It was sturdy enough to stand for a good number of years, so it may have also been used as a fire observation station by Dave Conkey, the fire warden. How long it continued to stand is impossible to determine, but photographs of the top of that ridge from the early-1920s show no sign of it.

To find the mystery tower’s former location on a map, look at the ridge immediately south of Witchhopple Lake. Neither historical maps nor contemporary USGS maps include a name for that ridge or summit. The ridge separates Witchhopple Lake from Little Rock Lake with Salmon Lake off to the southwest; all of which are seen in historical photos in the Rap-Shaw collection taken from the summit. Be warned – there is no trail to the top of this ridge and the going is rough. If you make it to the bald spot, here is one of the views you may see, although I suspect the trees may have grown some in the last 100 years.