Big Horn Rural Fire Protection District No 1 Hose Reel - Lovell, WY
Posted by: 
T0SHEA
N 44° 50.342 W 108° 23.372
12T E 706320 N 4968384
At Nevada Avenue and 3rd Street, this fire hall is in the "civic" area of Lovell, between the post office and town hall, with the library just down 3rd Street.
Waymark Code: WM10CWY
Location: Wyoming, United States
Date Posted: 04/15/2019
Views: 1
With around 30 volunteers at any given time, the department has an annual operating budget of between $160,000 and $200,000. The higher budgets occur during years when equipment is purchased. The department pays from $36,000 to $38,000 to use dispatch services in the area. One employee is paid to do the bookkeeping and facilities maintenance, and even that person volunteers to go on calls...
...and today that person is probably thankful that they aren't serving the same fire department 120 years earlier and periodically trundling down the streets of Lovell pushing the hose reel that stands beside the fire hall's large sign. Still with a short length of hose on the reel, the cart is in excellent condition, probably meaning that it has been recently restored. Bright red, the cart has two tall steel wheels with wire spokes. The tongue has a push handle each side, one for each of the "mules" assigned to the task of running as fast as they can as far as they can, to get the hose reel to a fire ASAP.
A cornerstone on the 3rd Street side of the building, laid by the local Masonic Lodge, indicates the building to have been built in 2001. To the west of that is a tall mural, a 911 memorial, depicting three firemen raising a flag amidst the wreckage of the disaster, with the ghosts of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background.
The fire district was formed in 1950 by volunteers from the community and was the very first in the state. Prior to that, the town of Lovell had a small fire department that was also formed by volunteers in 1935. The district now serves an area of nearly 600 square miles.
