VIRGINIA LOOKOUTS
CULPEPER
Culpeper County
September 29, 1955: "A dozen Virginia Forest Service employes recruited from various parts of the state, were to put final touches today on a new, 110-foot fire tower overlooking parts of five counties.
The steel tower has gone up rapidly this week one mile west of Richardsville, in Culpeper County. It replaces a creaky, wooden tower of the same height built by the Civilian Conservation Corps about 1935.
District Forester D.G. Wilfong, of Charlottesville, said the view from the top will include portions of Spotsylvania, Stafford, Culpeper, Orange and Fauquier counties.
Erecting the tower are 12 men whose ground-level jobs are as chief forest wardens or foresters. Ending a four-year period in which no fire towers were built in Virginia they're riding high on a spree which won't end until four new lookouts posts are up.
The first, in Greene County, went up in five days last week but Wilfong apologized, saying that after the four-year interval, the men only now 'are getting the knack of it again.' The Richardsville structure, if completed on schedule today, will have taken four days.
Other wooden towers are to be replaced in the next two weeks—for safety's sake, Wilfong said—in Mecklenburg and Westmoreland counties.
Wilfong said there are 120 fire towers in the state. A few reach the height of 120.
The Richardsville station, manned for the past five years during the forest fire season by Milton Brooks, keeps the Rappahannock Valley under surveillance. To the east (toward Fredericksburg) it covers the low lying area missed by the Cooperstown Tower in Stafford County and the Chancellor Tower in Spotsylvania, according to Spotsylvania's chief warden, Francis Boggs." (The Free Lance-Star)
The steel tower has gone up rapidly this week one mile west of Richardsville, in Culpeper County. It replaces a creaky, wooden tower of the same height built by the Civilian Conservation Corps about 1935.
District Forester D.G. Wilfong, of Charlottesville, said the view from the top will include portions of Spotsylvania, Stafford, Culpeper, Orange and Fauquier counties.
Erecting the tower are 12 men whose ground-level jobs are as chief forest wardens or foresters. Ending a four-year period in which no fire towers were built in Virginia they're riding high on a spree which won't end until four new lookouts posts are up.
The first, in Greene County, went up in five days last week but Wilfong apologized, saying that after the four-year interval, the men only now 'are getting the knack of it again.' The Richardsville structure, if completed on schedule today, will have taken four days.
Other wooden towers are to be replaced in the next two weeks—for safety's sake, Wilfong said—in Mecklenburg and Westmoreland counties.
Wilfong said there are 120 fire towers in the state. A few reach the height of 120.
The Richardsville station, manned for the past five years during the forest fire season by Milton Brooks, keeps the Rappahannock Valley under surveillance. To the east (toward Fredericksburg) it covers the low lying area missed by the Cooperstown Tower in Stafford County and the Chancellor Tower in Spotsylvania, according to Spotsylvania's chief warden, Francis Boggs." (The Free Lance-Star)