Fire Watch Tower - Gasconade County, MO
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 38° 41.381 W 091° 24.990
15S E 637718 N 4283531
This one is retired, and it seem it is being repurposed as a microwave dish tower.
Waymark Code: WM16MA3
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 08/26/2022
Views: 0
County of tower: Gasconade County
Location of tower: Boy Scout Rd., 1 mile E. of MO-H, Hermann
Built: 1930
"Some towers are very impressive, when looking at them from the ground,” says tower aficionado Bob Frakes, “and for some, the cab view is quite extraordinary.” Bob, who lives in Illinois, has documented Missouri’s fire towers in a 324-page book, A Place Above the Trees: Remembering Missouri’s Lookout Towers, with more than 250 photographs, set to be published by Words Matter Publishing later this year.
"Each forest fire watch tower has a cabin above the tree line where men and women have spent countless hours scanning for smoke or flames that might be miles away.
"If smoke or fire appears in the 360-degree view, the watcher points the crosshairs of a tool called the Osbourne Fire Finder to record the azimuth, which is the angle between the projected object and a known reference point. This information helps estimate the distance of the smoke or fire and is dispatched to other towers and plotted on a map to determine the location of the fire. Then fire officials decide whether to investigate by ground, air, or both.
"Once, there were thousands of fire towers across the country and nearly 260 in Missouri. Today, 65 are still standing in the Show-Me State. In the mid-1940s, fire watchers took to the air to monitor the landscape. Pilots worked full time at fire spotting into the 1960s. But as public knowledge and involvement in spotting forest fires became more prevalent, along with improvements in communications technology, the number of fires decreased, as did the need for air and tower surveillance.
"Now these historical lookout structures are being closed, removed, or relocated to make room for cellular towers and other antennas. Fifteen of the towers still standing in Missouri are under the ownership of the US Forest Service and can no longer be climbed; another 50 are on Missouri Department of Conservation land.
"Go even higher at our highest spot. The 72-foot Taum Sauk lookout, located at the highest point in the state, is on the National Historic Lookout Register. Built in 1949, it is the only tower in the state with a catwalk still in use." ~ Missouri Life Magazine