A view 60 feet above Caroga Lake from the Kane Mountain fire tower overlooking the Adirondack Park Saturday, August 16, 2025.

Deep in the thick, lush forest of the Adirondack Mountains, a lone watchtower stands peacefully, as it has for a century.

Since Thursday, local non-profit organizations and community organizers have been honoring the Kane Mountain fire tower’s centennial.

At the nearby Green Lake Road trailhead, hikers steadily marched their way up the rocky landscape to reach a clearing where the fire tower stands. With the warm sun beating down on the 100-year-old structure, volunteer steward Nancy Myers gave hikers stickers and completion cards for the trek.

“It was a functional fire tower. Until about 1988, there were probably 10 or 15 different rangers up here,” Myers said. “They would come up in the spring, and they’d stay in until fall,” she said, telling hikers that the rangers had a telephone at the top of the tower.

“It was our primary means in New York state of fighting fires.”

Myers said she’s been hiking to see the watchtower since she was a child, and got to know the rangers stationed there in the 1950s and 1960s.

The rangers “were very informative,” she said. “They would tell us about the different fauna, the mountains, the lakes.”

If there were a forest fire, rangers would communicate by telephone to triangulate the fire’s location.

However, in the 1980s, New York state began tearing down the towers as it decided to watch for fires using airplanes.

The abandoned tower deteriorated rapidly.

But residents rallied to save the structure, citing its historical importance to the community. And, in the mid-1990s, the tower was saved through the efforts of the Canada Lake Protective Association and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

“We kind of took it over as stewards,” said Rick Fink, Canada Lake Conservation Association president. “We’ve repaired the tower, we put the treads on it, [and] repaired the cabin. We have stewards up there on weekends that give people a little bit of history.”

Caroga Lake Tourism Chair Diana Ackerknecht said commemorating the 100th anniversary of the tower is an exciting and enjoyable way to bring people together, as well as to showcase what Caroga has to offer. She said the celebration has been a success for the town.

The turnout “is actually quite up from what we normally have in the area,” she said. “We’ve been trying to build our tourism in town ... so this has been a really great asset to have to bring [a] ton of........

© The Leader Herald