Looking Out: Maine's Fire Towers


Forest Service watchmen, Cooper Hill, Cooper, ca. 1919

Forest Service watchmen, Cooper Hill, Cooper, ca. 1919
Item 19038   info
Maine Forest Service

Also in 1891, the state set a minimum 15 cents per hour pay rate for those fighting forest fires.

Often, woods crews and farmers were called on to fight fires.

In the photo at left, two Forest Service employees, Allen [?] and Oscar Sadler, pose at the watch station at Cooper Mountain in about 1919. Sadler was the watchman from 1917-1919.

A wood fire watchtower was built on the mountain in 1913 and rebuilt in 1925. A steel tower, using steel discarded from the Naval Radio Tower in Bar Harbor, went up in 1937.

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