The Tusayan Lookout Tree

The Tusayan Lookout Tree. Early Fire Detection on the Kaibab National Forest. , The Tusayan Lookout Tree is an example of one of the earliest fire detection systems in American history., Early rangers were tasked with keeping the forest safe, especially from wild fire. With little funding and no staff, rangers would simply venture to the highest point on the landscape and look for fires., A ranger or fire guard would lop off the top of a tree and fit it with a platform complete with a railing, a chair, a telephone, a map board and a compass., By 1905, rangers were modifying trees with good views of the landscape into lookout trees. A person known as a lookout staffed the tree and located fires on the ground. A patrolman known as a smoke chaser would head off in the direction of the blaze and put it out., The Kaibab used lookout trees from 1905 through the 1940s. By the 1930s wooden and steel towers replaced many lookout trees. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a government sponsored work force under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, constructed many of the towers on the Kaibab National Forest.