UNC-Chapel Hill grad becomes fire tower devotee

The Associated Press

Peter Barr laughs when he looks back at a hiking trip he took about five years ago.

He was a student at UNC Chapel Hill, attempting to complete the outdoors-adventure component to an award he hoped to get. The Winston-Salem Journal reports that his goal was to hike from the eastern end of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the western end.

Barr, a novice hiker at the time, traversed the rugged Smokies wearing tennis shoes and lugging a 60-pound pack.

At some point into the hike, he stumbled upon Shuckstack Lookout Tower, an old steel fire tower that shoots 60 feet into the air. Carefully, Barr climbed up 78 wooden, creaky steps.

“I was actually pretty afraid of it,” Barr said. “But all the hard work was worth it at the top.”

What Barr took in at the top was a stunning 360-degree view of the Smokies, the Appalachian Trail and Fontana Dam among other points.

Since that hike, Barr has become a devotee of lookout towers. His new book, “Hiking North Carolina’s Lookout Towers,” includes hikes to 26 lookout towers in central and western North Carolina. Barr also includes notes on each tower’s history, condition and elevation, and what a person can expect to see at the top.

Barr said he was drawn to lookout towers for a couple of reasons.

“They offer incredible views. Every time you get on top of a lookout, you’re getting a breathtaking 360-degree view. The southern Appalachians are usually forested, and you can’t see out,” said Barr, who lives in Concord.

The towers also stir something nostalgic in him. The towers are historic structures that played a vital role in protecting the forests in the first half of the 20th century. Many of the towers included small living quarters for watchmen, and Barr said he liked imagining what it was like for those men to live in isolation in such rugged country.

“What an incredible job, to look out on top of the world,” he said.

Barr said there are about 120 towers in the state. He limited his book to those in the western and central parts of the state, because they are located on state or national land and are easily accessible to hikers. Many towers in the eastern half of the state are fenced off or don’t have hiking trails leading to them.

In the Winston-Salem area, the closest towers are on Moore’s Knob at Hanging Rock State Park in Danbury and Rendezvous Mountain at Rendezvous Mountain Educational State Forest in Wilkes County.

Text Only