Yellow River State Forest - Yellow River Fire Tower

Yellow River Fire Tower

The forest includes the Yellow River Fire Tower, the only fire tower standing in Iowa. The tower is an Aermotor LS40 model fire tower sold to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources from the U.S. Forest Service. It was acquired in 1950 and rebuilt on the current site in 1962. Today it is in poor condition, most of the window sashes have been broken out, all the window glass is gone, some of the cab roofing is gone, and the wood on the stairs and in the cab has rotted away, most of this is due to vandalism. So for that and safety reasons, the tower was fenced in and is currently closed to the public.

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Famous quotes containing the words yellow, river, fire and/or tower:

    They are very proper forest houses, the stems of the trees collected together and piled up around a man to keep out wind and rain,—made of living green logs, hanging with moss and lichen, and with the curls and fringes of the yellow birch bark, and dripping with resin, fresh and moist, and redolent of swampy odors, with that sort of vigor and perennialness even about them that toadstools suggest.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Up a lazy river by the old mill run, that lazy, lazy river in the noonday sun.
    Sidney Arodin, U.S. songwriter. “Lazy River,” Peer International Corp. (1931)

    The Apache have a legend that the coyote brought them fire and that the bear in his hibernations communes with the spirits of the “overworld” and later imparts the wisdom gained thereby to the medicine men.
    —Administration in the State of Arizona, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)