Circa-1928 Spruce Mt. fire tower opens in Corinth

Saratoga County Board of Supervisors Chairman Matthew Veitch photographs the view from the just-opened Spruce Mountain fire tower in Corinth.

A historic fire tower offering a panoramic 50-mile view from the top of Spruce Mountain has opened to the public, along with a new trail up the South Corinth peak.

The southern Adirondack scenery was on full display under a blue sky Wednesday, with changing leaves highlighting a view that stretched from Gore Mountain in the north to beyond Saratoga Lake in the south, and equal distances east and west.

“There’s a 360-degree view. It’s really quite amazing,” said Saratoga County Board of Supervisors Chairman Matthew Veitch, R-Saratoga Springs, after a visit to the tower’s cabin.

The fire tower’s opening marked the culmination of a decade-long effort to bring together various parties, including the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Saratoga County, which owns part of the top of the mountain as the site for a communications tower, and are part of an ongoing DEC effort to open or restore some of the region’s remaining fire towers.

“These towers are a cultural and economic asset to the Adirondack communities,” DEC Region 5 Director Robert Stegemann said in a ceremony at the base of the fire tower. “It just shows you the power of cooperation when we all work together.”

The tower will be the closest to the Capital Region of 21 fire towers in the Adirondacks that are open to hikers. “I expect it to get tons of visitors,” Stegemann said.

At 73 feet off the ground, the Spruce Mountain tower is also among the tallest in the Adirondacks. It was built in 1928, when such towers were commonly used for early fire detection in wilderness areas.

The new trail begins at the end of Fire Tower Road, and rises about 1,000 feet to the summit of the 2,100-foot mountain over the course of 1.2 miles. The trail crosses land belonging to DEC, Saratoga PLAN and Lyme Timber. Saratoga County owned the summit until a 2010 settlement of fines against the Saratoga County Sewer District included transfer of that land to DEC.

“This would have happened anyway,” Stegemann said when asked about the sewer fine settlement.

The Environmental Protection Fund provided $25,000 toward aiding the Adirondack Mountain Club with trail construction and the Student Conservation Association toward restoration work on the trail and tower itself.

In announcing the opening, the state noted that food, gas and lodging are available nearby in Corinth and Saratoga Springs — and Corinth town Supervisor Richard Lucia said he believes that the tower will attract visitors who will aid the local economy.

“I expect we will get a lot of people coming around, as popular as hiking and mountains and fire towers are,” he said.

“Hiking to restored fire towers has turned out to be an incredibly popular activity,” said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club. “Today, they really, really serve a public need.”

The Spruce tower has been closed for about 25 years and had fallen into disrepair before Saratoga PLAN’s purchase of land for part of a future trail initiated talk of tower restoration in 2004. If hikers can’t climb the tower, Spruce Mountain’s views are blocked by trees. Building the trail required negotiations with multiple landowners, including Lyme Timber, a private forestry company.

There were once 102 fire towers in New York state, said DEC regional Natural Resources Supervisor Tom Martin. “Fire towers are sentinels of the wilderness,” said Martin, who was once a fire observer on the now-dismantled Pharaoh Mountain tower in the eastern Adirondacks.

While the Spruce Mountain Tower will be open to the public for Columbus Day weekend, it will be closed due to big game rifle hunting season starting Oct. 24, as part of the state’s agreement with Lyme Timber, which owns most of the land on the mountain.

The hiking trail is reached by taking Wells Road west from Route 9N in Corinth to Fire Tower Road.