Friday, March 12, 2010

Nation’s first forest fire tower built in Maine

OK, I have a special reason to like today’s DownEast.com trivia question. Two of them, actually.

When I was a kid there was a Disney TV movie, “Fire on Kelly Mountain” (1973), in which Larry Wilcox played a young guy who works in a forest fire lookout tower, becomes bored, and ends up fighting a lightning strike.

And because I ended up being a wildland firefighter for three summers while attending college in Chico, California.

Where was the country’s first forest fire lookout tower built?

Answer

In 1905, on Squaw Mountain, since renamed Big Moose Mountain.

Big Moose Mountain is in Piscataquis County, Maine, by the way. It’s near Moosehead Lake.

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