Mount Pisgah Fire Lookout Tower (demolished) – Newcastle WY

Description

The Civilian Conservation Corps constructed a fire lookout tower at the top of Mount Pisgah in eastern Wyoming, ten miles NNE of Newcastle. The tower is no longer extant.

Cassity: O. B. Kongslie in Weston County described a CCC-constructed “observation tower” built atop Mount Pisgah, the highest point in Weston County. The tower itself was seventy feet tall and it was situated on a point over 6,000 feet in altitude. The tower and the cabin it supported were made of solid steel and plate glass providing an unobstructed view that stretched all the way to the Bighorn Mountains to the west and to Casper Mountain and the Laramie Range to the southwest. The tower cabin included at that time “the most modern instruments” for charting location and estimating distances of fires, while at the foot of the tower weather instruments in a small structure provided additional information. “The Forest Service,” Kongslie observed, “claims that these towers will soon pay for themselves in saving the forest, for last summer, many fires were detected and stopped before they got under way by the alert look out rangers.”