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Re: Take a break, enjoy the view, just South of us...

By: weco in FFFT | Recommend this post (0)
Mon, 05 Nov 12 10:48 PM | 73 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Food For Further Thought 		Msg. 47416 of 65535
(This msg. is a reply to 47415 by oldCADuser)
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We've had a family cabin, jeeps, dirt bikes and all East of Sonora in the Sierras for many years, built it in the late 70s I think it was.. anyway Mt Elizabeth is the nearby fire lookout, similar tower on top of the mountain in National Forest lands... Been up to the top a few times, talk to the wather if anyone was there, or just look around if not.. Recently radio stations have joined as neighbors, so security became more of an issue, gates, blocked roads, etc.. We can still get up but the trail is pretty rough even for the jeep.. A bit of active history.. Lightning strikes cause a lot of the fires, but dummy land or homeowners are also sources... As my brother is in his 80s, we're slowing down the dirt bikes, I brought mine back home, (Yamaha 500), but the jeep ('45) is still going strong, still a great place to wander... I need to san more of the old photos...

Here's someone else's recent photo...

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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Take a break, enjoy the view, just South of us...
By: oldCADuser in FFFT
Mon, 05 Nov 12 7:35 PM 		Msg. 47415 of 65535

When my father first joined the Michigan DNR (Department of Natural Resources) back around 1957 he worked as a fire spotter in the tower seen below in Lewiston in Northern Michigan. He did this for 3 or 4 years until he got a chance to transfer to the Game Division where he was a heavy equipment operator. A few years later they stopped manning the fire towers except during extremely dry weather. By then most of this sort of thing was being done by aircraft. In Michigan a fire spotter's job was only during the day and when it rained he didn't have to go up, but by the same token he didn't get paid either. Also, he would get laid-off during the winter months (this is why he eventually transferred to the Game Division as that was a year-round job).

The tower remained basically unmanned for about 5 years and then one year we had one of those really dry summers and they hired my mother to man the tower for a couple of weeks (she used to go up and take my father his lunch once in awhile when he was working there and she got to understand how the spotting was done and how to use the radio). A year or two later the state sold the land that the tower was on and the new owners had it torn down for scrape and to limit their liability (when we were teens a lot of us used to go up there and climb the tower just for fun). Anyway, it turns out that my mother was the last person paid to man that fire tower and when the State sold the property, they gave her a plaque recognizing her for that service.

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