Pack Monadnock Fire Tower, Peterborough New Hampshire

Fire Tower History

The Pack Monadnock Fire Tower is one of 15 active fire towers owned and operated by the State of New Hampshire, through the New Hampshire Division of Forests & Lands, as part of a statewide fire tower system. Prior to its use for fire prevention and observation, Pack Monadnock was a popular hiking destination in the late nineteenth century. Miller State Park is the oldest state park in New Hampshire and occupies the summit of Pack Monadnock. It was first established in 1891 when Charles F. Melendy and Autin A. Spofford deeded a three-acre tract of land on the summit of Pack Monadnock to the state. In 1892, it was officially dedicated in memory of General James Miller, a hero of the Battle of Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812. Early on, the park was a popular destination for picnicking, sledding, skiing, and snowshoeing. Until 1901, cattle were driven from surrounding farmlands to the summit to graze. A hotel called the Pioneer House was built on a southwest ridge in 1892 by George F. Baker. The hotel burned to the ground in 1896 and was replaced by a smaller hunting lodge. This building was destroyed by fire in 1924 and not rebuilt. Miller State Park eventually grew to cover 82 acres. The park was developed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC improved the carriage road that led to the summit for automobile use, built visitor facilities and structures, and improved trails.

The 1938 Hurricane caused extensive damage to forests across New Hampshire. The State's forestry division anticipated a greater fire risk in the following years due to the extensive deadwood on the ground. In response, the state built five additional fire lookouts across the state, including one in Miller Park. These towers were International Derrick towers manufactured by Derrick & Equipment Company of Columbus, Ohio, and assembled on site. The State built the towers using New England Forest Emergency funds and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) labor).

The Pack Monadnock Fire Tower was built as a 41-foot-tall tower in 1939. In 1940, the original 7-by-7-foot cab was replaced with a 10-by-10-foot wooden cab. A ground cabin for the watchman was also built that year. Due to its location in a popular state park, Pack Monadnock recorded over 24,000 visitors in the 1940 season. This count was only exceeded by Mount Monadnock's tower (not extant) in nearby Jaffrey, NH.

In February 1960, a lightning strike destroyed the fire tower's cab. A new cab was built and installed by the end of the season. The new cab had no steel above the tower structure, and watchmen were informed to leave their station in the event of an electrical storm. The watchman at the time was Roy Finan (b. 1915) of Hancock, who had been operating the station since 1941.

In 1981, the fire tower was taken out of service. The steel-frame structure was retained but the cab was removed. Radio relays and equipment were installed on the structure. In 2002, the Department of Environmental Services offered funds to rebuild the cab in return for permission to locate an air quality monitoring facility on site. The State approved the arrangement. A cab fabricated at the state facility and airlifted to the summit was installed in Fall 2004. The Department of Environmental Services built a laboratory station immediately south of the fire tower for data collection.

Fire Towers in New Hampshire

A national concern and effort to prevent forest fires and conserve natural woodland resources emerged in the late nineteenth century. Timber harvesting, especially in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, boomed between 1850 and 1900, when lumber production increased nearly ten-fold. In the Northeast, unsustainable woodland management and the abandonment of farms left land prone to fire and subsequent erosion and landslides. Recognizing the need for public forestland and oversight of the timber industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture established the Division of Forestry in 1881. In 1907, this agency became the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). While the USFS was well-equipped to manage federal forestlands, it initially lacked the ability to acquire private land without congressional approval until passage of the Weeks Act in 1911 (see below).

On March 29^th, 1893, the state formed the New Hampshire Forestry Commission (NHFC). The NHFC's primary objective was "to investigate the extent and character of the original and secondary forests of the state … the damage done to them from time to time by forest fires; and any other important facts relating to forest interests …" The Commission focused its efforts on creating a robust network of fire wardens across the state and cooperating with existing private lookout stations. In the early 1900s, a series of major fires burned approximately ten percent of the White Mountains Region forests, attributed to prolonged droughts, railroads, and abusive land use activities. After this uptick in fires and subsequent damages to forests, the state began a focused effort on fire prevention and protection of remaining forests.

Fire lookouts (aka fire towers) had been used in western United States and in Maine and New York prior to the twentieth century but were not yet widely in use in the Northeast around 1900. The first fire towers in New Hampshire were built in response to the increased fire risk from the intensive logging of the White Mountains. Clear-cutting operations left a thick layer of slash (tree limbs removed from logs), which when dried became an ideal source of fuel for wildfires. During an unusually dry spring in 1903, massive fires burned large sections of forest in the White Mountains and threatened several towns. One of the blazes threatened a resort hotel owned by the Mount Pleasant Hotel Company, which constructed the first fire lookout in the region in 1904. The State of New Hampshire began funding fire tower construction in 1909, and others were built by private organizations, including the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF) and the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association (NHTOA). The New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association (NHTOA) was established in 1910 to provide fire detection and protection of privately held timberland. Membership fees were based on the acreage of timber tracts members owned and funded the establishment of lookouts over these tracts of forest. These early lookouts were wood construction on mountain summits, such as Mount Pleasant, Mount Rosebrook and Croydon Peak, to provide 360-degree views of the surrounding forests. The same year NHTOA was established, timberland owners and the NHTOA contributed $4,100 toward the immediate building of lookout towers across the state. As a result, ten lookout towers were established, most of which were constructed in the summer of 1910. There locations were chosen based on their proximity to valuable timberland and places of manufacturing that were more prone to fires.

On March 1^st, 1911, the U.S. Congress passed the Weeks Act, allowing for the use of federal funds to purchase forest land for conservation purposes. The legislature was championed by and named in honor of Representative and later Senator John Wingate Weeks (1860-1926) of Massachusetts, who aptly presented public forestlands as beneficial rather than detrimental for the private timber industry. Through the Weeks Act, 6 million acres of land in the eastern United States was acquired with $9 million in federal funds. By June 1912, over 70,000 acres were acquired to form the White Mountain Region (later known as the White Mountain National Forest). By 1915, the forest consisted of over 100,000 acres of land. The USFS formally established the White Mountain National Forest on May 16^th, 1918, once it reached an adequate size to be managed as a national forest, including the construction of fire towers. The Weeks Act, passed a year after 85 people were killed during wildfires that burned more than 3 million acres of land in Idaho, included a provision that allowed federal agencies to cooperate with the states in controlling forest fires. Through a $200,000 federal allocation, New Hampshire was the first state to benefit in funding for fire protection from the act. The USFS subsequently worked with the State of New Hampshire and the NHTOA to develop a system of fire lookouts with overlapping coverage in the White Mountains, leading to the construction of dozens of lookouts and hundreds of miles of telephone lines to provide communication by the mid-twentieth century.

By 1912, New Hampshire had 12 state-owned and managed lookout stations and an additional six operated by the NHTOA. The NHFC continued to construct and operate mountain-top fire towers and employ watchmen and patrolmen. During dry weather, temporary fire lookout stations were established at various elevated locations. In 1913, the number of fire towers in the state grew to 26, including those established that year at Belknap Mountain, Blue Job, Kearsarge South, and Pawtuckaway, all four of which remain active fire tower locations. By 1914, all permanent fire towers and station were equipped with panoramic maps for identification of fire locations. After the NHFC assumed responsibilities for the NHTOA lookouts in 1917, the number of lookouts managed by the state increased to 29.

Watchmen were a critical component to the state's fire towers system. Early on, watchmen were often timber company woodsmen who took on fire watchman duties during the fire season. They were typically responsible for the construction and maintenance of the fire tower developments and construction of their own cabins and outbuildings at the tower sites. Watchmen were equipped with field glasses, maps, compasses, and rangefinders. A telephone line connected the fire tower and the local fire warden for quick communication in the event of a fire. The watchmen were also tasked with educating the public about forest fire prevention, and access to the towers was almost immediately sought out by outdoor recreators in the state.

Initially, fire lookouts were built exclusively of wood, consisting of either braced structures or platforms built in trees. The first steel tower was constructed on the summit of South Pawtuckaway Mountain (in present-day Pawtuckaway State Park) in 1914, followed by steel towers topped by enclosed cabins (also referred to as cabs) constructed on the summits of Blue Job and Belknap mountains the following year. Steel towers cost slightly more than wood towers to construct, but were more resistant to the elements and deterioration than wood towers and provided better shelter for the watchman. The steel was usually painted black and the cabins were painted dark green, to better blend into the setting. The NHFC's 1924 report stated the necessity for enclosed cabs and considered it standard design for towers built moving forward. At that time, New Hampshire had 12 steel enclosed towers, two wood enclosed towers, eight wood open towers, three cabins on bare summits, and one cabin below the summit. Over the next two decades, wood towers were replaced with steel-framed towers. Various fabricators were contracted to design and supply these steel towers. Example manufacturers include the New Hampshire Structural Steel Company; the Aeromotor Corporation of Oklahoma, which supplied the Kearsarge (south) fire tower; and International Derrick of Ohio, which supplied towers during the late 1930s. In 1939, the state purchased five towers from International Derrick: Warner Hill, Pack Monadnock, Craney Hill, Smarts Mountain, and Sam's Hill. Improvements to telephone lines and lightning protection were often completed when towers were replaced.

During the 1930s, the state invested in outdoor recreational facilities and saw an increase in hiker visitation to the fire towers. At this time, original ladders that remained were replaced with internal staircases that were easier for watchmen and visitors to ascend and descend when accessing the cabs. A New Deal Program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) operated between 1933 and 1942 to provide work for young men and support the development on state and federal lands. Within New Hampshire, over 20,000 men served in the CCC among the 28 camps across the state, mostly within the White Mountain National Forest and state parks and forests. The CCC planted trees; built fire breaks, served as firefighters when needed; and constructed and maintained roads, bridges, and dams. The CCC also constructed much of the state's parks and forests infrastructure and visitor amenities. In support of the state's fire tower system, CCC crews built and improved access roads and trails, laid new telephone lines, and built watchman cabins and outbuildings at various tower locations.

Following the Hurricane of 1938 that impacted the Northeast region, the need for widespread fire detection and prevention in New Hampshire was significant. The storm caused tremendous damage across the region, destroying approximately 2 billion trees, littering New England forests with deadwood and debris. CCC crews assisted the region's recovery from the storm, including with infrastructure repair and timberland cleanup. The state dispatched numerous crews to remove and operate temporary sawmills to remove the downed timber from the forests. This cleanup effort lasted for over two years and stocked papermills in the region for nearly a decade. To support fire prevention efforts in New Hampshire following the hurricane, 11 new fire towers were built in 1939 and 1940 on state and federal lands.

During World War II, the state, like the rest of the country, was unable to staff many of the fire lookouts with male state personnel. Fire detection relied heavily on surveillance by aircraft during the war, in addition to women staffing some of the state's national forest lookout towers through the USFS's Women Observers on the Forest (WOOF) program. Some of the state's towers were used by state or federal agencies for aircraft detection, requiring alterations to towers. After the war, the towers were staffed again by state watchmen, and most of these alterations were removed. In the 1960s, most towers were staffed six days a week from 8am to 5pm, which increased to seven days from 8am to 8pm during periods of hot, dry weather, when fire risk was highest. By the late twentieth century, most of the state fire towers were 40 to 60 years old. To keep the steel towers structurally sound and functional, the state added additional bracing elements, structural struts, and tension cables. If raising the tower height was necessary, the new cab was exclusively constructed of wood to avoid use of conductive metal in case of electrical storms. By 1980, the state operated 22 fire towers, in addition to three aerial detection routes.

More than 90 fire towers were constructed across New Hampshire on state, federal, and privately owned lands during the twentieth century as part of a statewide fire prevention system. Majority of these towers are not extant. However, remnants such as concrete footings, wood and steel structural pieces, or ruins of former structures, endure at many of the former tower locations. As of 2017, 13 towers remained standing, but inactive for fire prevention purposes. Some of the inactive towers remain accessible for outdoor recreation, while others are inaccessible. As of present (2022), 16 towers remain active for fire prevention purposes, consisting of 15 owned by the state and one owned by the Town of Moultonborough (Red Hill) and operated in coordination of the state and Lakes Region Conservation Trust. Active towers are staffed on weekends and during times of high fire danger, April to October. Across two state regions, the New Hampshire Division of Forests & Lands operates the extant fire towers, oversees 9 ranger districts, and employs two Regional Forest Rangers and 7 District Rangers, who oversee wildland fire control and enforce laws pertaining to timber harvesting and forest protection. Fire watchmen operate autonomously at each lookout and coordinate with mobile fire patrols and over 2,000 appointed Forest Fire Wardens and Deputy Wardens during high-risk of fires and active fires.

Property Description

Pack Monadnock Fire Tower, also known as Miller Park Tower, is located in Miller State Park in Peterborough. Pack Monadnock has an elevation of 2,288 feet. While Miller State Park covers 533 acres, the Fire Tower area is approximately 0.35 acres containing the fire tower and non-associated structures. The fire tower is located on the summit's exposed bedrock and adjacent to a laboratory building (Ambient Air Monitoring Program facility). A paved parking area associated with the state park encircles the fire tower, educational center, and small picnicking area. The parking area is surrounded by state facilities, including restroom buildings, a picnic shelter, an office/contact station, and several lookouts and trails, many of which date to the CCC park improvements. Miller Park Road, which terminates at the parking area, ascends the mountain from Wilton Road. The area is forested, with mixed deciduous-coniferous cover.

Pack Monadnock Fire Tower is a 41-foot-tall, four-tiered, steel-frame tower with a square, hip-roof, wood-frame cab. It was built in 1939 as a fire tower using New England Forest Emergency funds and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) labor. The steel tower is an International Derrick tower manufactured by Derrick & Equipment Company of Columbus, Ohio, and retains the maker's plate on its northwest column. The tower's painted steel frame sits on four poured concrete piers on bedrock. The tower structure consists of 3-inch, L-profile vertical steel columns with horizontal struts and cross-bracing. The tiers are tapered from eleven feet on the ground to about 8.5 feet at the top of the third tier. Additional 2-by-4-inch secondary struts have been added at the mid-point of each tier. Guy wires from the top of the fourth tier anchor the tower to the bedrock.

Stairs ascend north, diagonally from a poured concrete platform at the south corner of the tower base. The tower stairs consist of three flights with bolted steel truss-stringers and bolted wood treads. The lower two flights are diagonal and the third to the platform is square with the tower frame. Landings have wood platforms reinforced by steel cross beams. Handrails on the stairs and at the landings consist of welded 1.5-by-1.5-inch steel bar railings and posts with a smaller mid-rail. Wire fencing infill has been added around the landings.

The current cab dates to 2004-2005, when the tower was restored for service. The cab measures approximately ten feet square and overhangs the steel structure below it. It has wood clapboard cladding and bands of three windows with wood frames and sills on each elevation. Fenestration consists of one-over-one, double-hung sash, vinyl windows. The cab's interior has a finish-grade plywood-paneled ceiling and walls, and carpeting covering the wood subfloor. The hatch is on the south side of the cab. The cab contains typical fire tower equipment and furnishings: an Osborne Fire Finder in the center and a map hung on the wall. The hatch to the platform below is a reinforced wood-paneled door that opens on its short end with a counterbalance weight.

The original (1939) cab was a 7-by-7-foot, metal structure. In 1940, however, it was replaced by a larger, 10-by-10-foot, wooden cab. This cab was destroyed by lightning strike in 1960. The replacement 1960-era cab was a similar form and had one-over-one, single-hung sash windows. The fire tower was taken out of service in 1981, though it continued to host radio communication equipment. The cab was removed and replaced by radar mounts. In 2003, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services underwrote restoration of the fire tower in return for permission to install monitoring equipment on the tower. Restoration work occurred in 2004-2005, allowing the fire tower to return to service for the 2005 fire season. The adjacent center provides laboratory and interpretive space for the state-run ambient air monitoring program.

NH Dept. of Natural & Cultural Resources

Photographs of Pack Monadnock Fire Tower