A new way of looking at a burning problem

A new beginning. Last evening while reading a series of old papers from Centrailia, Washington "The Daily Chronicle" I found this little piece that may have had an impact on the use of steel towers for fire detection.

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"The steel towers that support electric power transmission lines are being increasingly used by forest rangers as fire lookout stations in national forests. With the harnessing of the mountain streams a network of these lines is gradually being woven over the forests and in the absence of other convenient lookouts, the rangers find the steel towers helpful in their fire patrol work." August 9, 1913

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In another story from "The Centrailia News-Examiner" dated August 4, 1909:

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"To obtain the greatest results in minimum of expense, the federal forestry service has decided to establish on the most advantageous points of the National forests in the west, a series of lookout stations from which news of the beginning of forest fires can be telephoned to all forest officers. As all of these stations will command a view of the country for many miles, the work of detecting and extinguishing fires in their incipiency will be great facilitated, so that hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of timber can be saved annually by this innovation. Fire loses in the national forests are kept at a point where they are trivial, when compared with the damage which would be caused were the lands contained in unprotected areas."