Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303280092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Buy a fire tower.
The state Forestry Department is unloading landmark towers that have stood watch over Virginia timberland since the 1920s. Irrelevant in the age of electronics, the 6- to 12-story platforms once symbolized the woodsy life of the forest ranger.
"Image-wise, we are losing something. But we've got other images we're projecting. It won't hurt us," said Carl Garrison, head forester for the southern Hampton Roads area.
Virginia once had 98 fire towers scattered across its wilderness. The Forestry Department would hire local folks to sit in the remote perches during fall or spring fire seasons. If smoke appeared on the horizon, the watcher sighted along a map to get the fire's coordinates, then radioed in.
By 1979, airplane flights and sophisticated communications systems had become more efficient than the far-flung network of observation posts.
Now, almost three dozen towers have been torn down or sold. Sixty-five still stand, and 13 of those are for sale.
Minimum acceptable bid: $1. Plus you have to dismantle and move the tower.
"I just like them because of how old they are," said Roger Cobb, 38, who this year bought the last two Roanoke-area towers that were on the market. "My grandma, I carried her up to them, and she thought they were pretty neat."
Cobb bought a tower near Eagle Rock and another at Goshen Pass. A welder for the Forestry Department, Cobb is dismantling the 60-foot platforms with his father's help. He plans to rebuild one at his home near Rustburg in Campbell County, and he might put the other on property in Bedford County near Big Island.
Both were built in the 1930s by the federal Civilian Conservation Corps. "The one at Goshen has the guys' names in it," Cobb said. "I remember the exact date: November 1936. They all wrote their names, for the 379th CC Corps in Covington. When I took the wood out, it was wrote on the metal up under the wood."
Another tower, or at least part of one, is being preserved across the state in Southampton County.
"I was going to set it up here in the yard for the boys to have a clubhouse," said Hunter Darden III, who last fall acquired a fire tower from the town of Capron. Instead of making a clubhouse, Darden donated the top 30 feet to the Southampton County Farm and Forestry Museum.
"A lot of people always wanted to go up in a fire tower but never would because it was up so high. Now maybe they will, because it's only 30 feet," Darden said.
He planted the middle 40 feet of the tower at the Southampton Speedway as a filming platform. Now cameramen videotape each race from above and sell tapes to the racers.
In Isle of Wight County, a fire tower that for 50 years marked the junction of Virginia 644 and 258 - also known as Fire Tower Road - is now a launching pad for clay disks at the Southwinds Shooting Farm.
"It's kind of sad, in a way, but at least it stayed in the area," said Pete Edwards, co-owner of the skeet-shooting range.
Edwards, 45, used to sneak up the tower with friends when he was a child. Now he can climb it any time.
One of the towers still for sale is in the western Suffolk village of Holland. It rises 100 feet over tidy little farms and patches of forest.
Built in 1958 and abandoned in 1979, the Holland tower has weathered well. Its gray steel supports have only a dusting of rust. Lower steps have been removed to discourage vandals, but otherwise the wooden treads are sound.
At the top, the trapdoor into the bottom of the little cabin has been padlocked shut, and the padlock is too rusted to open. A peek through a crack shows that the four sides of windows are intact but that green paint is peeling from the panes. The room is bare except for a round map table in the center.
Looking outward, the view ranges for 10 or 12 miles.
The ground is far enough down to be a little dizzying. Plant this tower at the beach, and you'd never have to worry about floods. But you'd have to live like a monk; the square cabin is less than 7 feet on a side.
There are plenty of other possibilities. One man bought a tower for his telescope, said Harold Olinger, chief of administration for the Forestry Department. Cobb, the welder, might put a water tank halfway up one of his towers, because he lives so far out in Campbell County he figures he'll have to douse his own fires.
Businessmen have bought towers to lease to radio stations. The state Corrections Department took the top of one to use as a lookout station. And a man in Chancellorsville is preserving his as a monument; built in 1928, it's the oldest steel tower still standing in Virginia.
"Some people have legitimate needs, and some want them for their own selfish reasons, so to speak. As a play toy," said Garrison, the Hampton Roads district forester.
And some people just want to hang onto a symbol they've known all their lives. "I never had any idea they'd ever sell any of them," Cobb said. "Some people want them for the metal. But they were landmarks, you know. I think it would be a shame to scrap them out."
by CNB