Tall Peak Fire Tower – Hot Springs AR

Description

The Tall Peak Fire Tower is located southeast of Mena on Forest Service Road No. 38A in Polk County in Ouachita National Forest. The tower is a two story, field stone and wood structure built on a continuous stone foundation. The first level is made of field stone and each comer has the distinctive inward-sloping corners peculiar to Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) construction. The fist level consists of a single room that has two small, stationary windows on the west and south sides and a single door on the east side. The north side of the structure has an external stairway leading to the second level of the structure. The second level of the structure has a porch which extends around the east, south, and west sides of the structure with a plywood balustrade. The second floor has a one room observation deck which has four windows on each side except on the west side which has three windows and a door. There are no coverings for these windows and no trace of original material used for the windows. The structure is topped with a pyramidal roof covered with composition shingles. The structure has had some vandalism and some repairs done to it but is in a deteriorated state at present. [Photos taken more recently than the 1993 register of historic places report show it in very good condition]

The Tall Peak Fire Tower was constructed circa 1938 by members of the 742nd Company of the Arkansas CCC District stationed at the Mena Camp that was located approximately eight miles to the northwest, near the small town of Shady. It was constructed to function as a fire and observation tower to help prevent the forest fires that heretofore had ravaged the forest with devastating effect. As such, the Tall Peak Fire Tower is significant through its associations with the contributions to American social history made by the Civilian Conservation Corps, its associations with the emphasis upon conservation of our natural resources that was the original mandate of the CCC and its status as an excellent example of the more functional CCC architecture in a remarkable state of preservation.

The tower is accessible by a road or a hiking trail from Shady Lake Campground (also a CCC project) that is described as strenuous by www.arkohiker.org