Wallace Humphrey, using the Osborne Fire Finder device while manning the Glovers Lake Fire Tower, about 1950. Courtesy photo.
By Milton F. Whitmore
Northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, wooded as they have always been — except following the timber era in the state — have been under the threat of forest fires for decades. The prevention and the spotting of such fires has been a priority for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (formerly the Michigan Conservation Department) since its inception 100 years ago. Fire lookout towers dotted the north country hills, and Manistee County was no exception.
Towers were located within sight of each other from their “cabins” atop the steel structures that lifted them high into the air. The Honor area in Benzie County, Glovers Lake in Northern Manistee County, and Udell Hills and Red Bridge, also in Manistee County, sported towers within sight of the watchers who manned them. Of these, only the Udell Hills tower remains. The rest were dismantled in the 1960s.
I remember the Glovers Lake Tower, located east of U.S. Highway 31, on a hill to the immediate northeast of the small lake off Glovers Lake Road. Its last fire spotter was Wallace Humphrey, and I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife last fall at their home set in the same hills as the tower. This area is near what used to be Humphrey, a stop on the Arcadia and Betsie River Railroad.
Wallace Humphrey is spry, interesting and humorous. He manned the Glovers Lake Tower from the 1930s until its closure in the mid-1960s. His watch was interrupted when Humphrey served in the U.S. Army in WWII and was wounded fighting in Sicily with Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army.
It was an easy drive or walk from his home to the tower, which he manned during daylight hours from spring’s thaw-out into November’s first snows. The job was to sit in the tower’s cabin and be on the lookout for smoke that might indicate the beginning of a forest conflagration.
When smoke was spotted, Humphrey would use an Osborne Fire Finder to determine the location of the fire source. The Osborne system was/is composed of a topographic map of the area, oriented and centered on a horizontal table with a circular rim graduated in degrees (and fractions). Two sighting apertures were mounted above the map on opposite sides of the ring and slid around the arc.
The device was used by moving the sights until Humphrey could peek through the nearer sighting hole and view the cross hairs in the further sight aligned with the fire. He would then note the degrees on the graduated ring beneath the sight. The degrees would then be noted, a rough calculation of the elevation was made and the information would be called into a central, local information center, usually an MCD/MDNR office.
The Glovers Lake tower has been gone for many years, but Wallace Humphrey is still with us and remains a valuable link to Manistee County’s history. He and his wife tend their home and property with neat detail and still nurture their old apple orchard with tenderness and care. If you get a hankering next fall for an old-fashioned apple such as a Wagener, a great eating and baking apple, give Wallace a visit. You’ll enjoy the experience.
Milton F. Whitmore and his family moved to the Arcadia/Onekama area, where he taught middle school science and math until his retirement. He is active with the Arcadia Lions Club.
