Crane Mountain fire tower finds new home

By Tim Rowland

At least when it comes to fire towers, Gary and Wini Martin believe that what comes down must go up. Which explains why, on a ruddy autumn day, the cab of the old Crane Mountain fire tower was sitting by the side of a narrow country road in the town of Thurman.

“It’s all steel, must weigh more than a ton,” Gary said, with a voice filled with knowledge born of experience. The rustic Martin’s Lumberyard was a stop on the 2024 Thurman Farm Tour, and the symbolic midpoint in a remarkable journey for the cab, which last lorded over 3,251-foot Crane Mountain in 1987.

While the cab can’t be returned to Crane Mountain, the Martins can put it back up on a knoll on their farm where, like a mariner’s final resting place overlooking the sea, it will have a fine view of the massif that for 68 years it called home.

“In a clearing out back we have a rock outcropping that looks right at Crane,” Gary said.

According to a historical essay by John Sasso, teams of horses logged the components of the 35-foot fire tower up Crane in 1919, where observers kept a watchful eye in 1971. A bad drought two years later led to a brief revival, and the tower was credited with spotting two fires that were extinguished before they could become calamities.

But the glory didn’t last. Fire spotting increasingly became the job for airplane patrols and in 1987 the tower was taken apart and helicoptered down into the valley.

The chopper dropped the cab in a field owned by a local couple who were enamored by the curiosity, but not entirely sure what one does with the cab of a 35-foot steel Aermotor model LS-40 observation tower. “They always assumed the DEC would be coming back for it, but they never did,” Gary said. Enter Dick and Perky Granger, who in the early 1990s finally talked the couple into selling the cab for $50, according to an essay by Dan Forbush for First Wilderness Stories from Open Space.

Dick Granger built a platform for the cab, just high enough to give the trap door room to swing open, and there it stayed for another 30 years.

“Over time, the cab’s supports rotted to the point where the cab became a hazard, a reality that gave Dick an idea,” Forbush wrote. “He proposed in a note to Gary and Wini that it be moved to their 100-acre property at Martin’s Tree Farm.”

At its final resting spot, the public will be able to visit it at the end of a short hike, as well as two annual events, the Woods Walk and Artisan Market in June and the Thurman Fall Farm Tour in October.

“They knew we were really into saving our history,” Gary said. “And Wini had always wanted a silo for the barn — I said, if you can’t have a silo would you settle for a fire tower cab?”

All that was left was to get the cab out of the woods and over the road to the Martins’ tree farm. Under the watchful direction of experienced barn restorer Andy LeBlanc, the six-hour adventure turned into one of those classic Adirondack backwoods projects — the less said it about it the better, probably — involving two trailers, a truck, ATV, crowbars, metal cutter, chainsaw, jacks, air compressor and a set of rods upon this the cab could roll. A technique borrowed from the ancient Egyptians, they said.

When the cab was finally in place it became the star of the Thurman Farm tour, although “some people didn’t know what it was,” said Wini, who printed out a sheet of paper reading “Crane Mountain Fire Tower” that she taped to the side.

But for most, it was already famous. “The mountain was the first thing that you’d see when you got off Exit 23,” said Kraig Armstrong who had driven up from Glenville. “It’s always a great hike with great visuals.”

“In my younger days I certainly climbed Crane a bit,” said Greg Schaefer, whose uncle Paul Schaefer, an icon in Adirondack history, wrote about Crane in his book “Cabin Country.”

Along with the cab, the Martins displayed a thick register filled with names and comments from generations of visitors to the tower. Schaefer said he’s found the names of some of his cousins, and suspects he signed the log book at some point as well.

“Every one of these names has a story,” Gary said. It’s said Henry Ford’s name is in there somewhere. So is the name of Will Wood, an observer who called in a fire started by a steam engine that wound up consuming the farm of Gary’s grandfather.

“A lot of people have no idea of the history,” Gary said. “But with the move, I’m thinking more of these stories will start coming out.”

Photo at top: A sunset with the Crane Mountain fire tower in silhouette, taken in 1982 by photographer Ed Burke. Courtesy photo