Michigan's First Fire Tower

Michigan's First Fire Tower. . Forest fires are a CALAMITY and rank properly with flood, pestilence, famine, earthquakes.... [it is] estimated that by 1912, forest fire had destroyed more timber than was logged. , -Annual Forestry Report of the Game, Fish, and Forestry Department, 1912, Throughout the late nineteenth century, fires raged across the state, destroying land and lives. Decades of logging had left piles of dry branches and stumps across Northern Michigan, creating the perfect fuel for forest fires., In 1913, Michigan's first State Forester, Marcus Schaaf, successfully lobbied the Department of Conservation to construct manned fire towers. This fire tower, Michigan's first, was built on a nearby hill overlooking the Higgins Lake Nursery grounds., In 1903, the newly formed Michigan Forestry Commission knew it had to protect the new nursery's seedlings from fire. Workers dug miles of fire breaks in and around the nursery and nearby state forest., The Civilian Conservation Corps built most of Michigan's fire breaks in the 1930s. Many of them remain. They can be seen along highways in the wide clear paths used for utility lines, or the small dirt roads that crisscross forests., Today, controlled fires are part of good forest management., Fire lookouts had a difficult job. Imagine standing on the five-foot- square platform of a fire tower from 7A.M. to 6 P.M. April to October, scanning the landscape for the smoke of a dangerous forest fire.