Demond Hill Lookout Tower Traditional Geocache
Demond Hill Lookout Tower
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Demond Hill Lookout Tower
Go back in time, 60 or 70 years; go west of Raco, Michigan to the highest hill you can find in the area. Then climb the lookout tower another 65 feet. Your job would start on May 1st and end about October 1st depending on weather conditions. You would work very long, lonely
hours by yourself. When lighting approached, you didn’t climb down for safety, your job was really just starting. Once a fire was spotted from this vantage point, a message was sent to the Ranger Station or the CCC camp in Raco to call out manpower. By 1942, when Raco was the only camp left on the district, it’s fire protection area covered 151,140 acres. After Camp Raco closed, the facilities were used during World War II as a German Prisoner of War Camp.
The Demond Hill Fire Tower is one of four still standing in the Hiawatha National Forest. Today it is used as an antenna base for radio communications but it was once the heart of fire-spotting efforts in this area. The USA had 8000 active fire towers in the 1950's, but today only a few remain in full time use.
The following poem was written by Vern Lutz of the Raco CCC Camp 667 and printed in the Sault News on 9-19-1936
DRIFTING SMOKE
“When the sun has gone down in a haze of red,
And you’re up in front and almost dead,
With the burning sting of the drifting smoke
And you’re thinking now that it’s no joke
To be fighting fire on a windy day.
And you’re wondering when you’ll hit the hay
In the good old camp twelve miles away;
You gripe about food, but on you fight,
In the drifting smoke and the fire flecked night-
And praying for rain as never before,
But the smoke drifts on and you fight some more
Till you’re almost sick, and tired to the core
“You fight in the smoke till you’re almost dead,
Then it’s into camp, and half past two
You fell like heaving a G.I. shoe
And the forest ranger who dares, it seems,
To awaken you from the land of dreams
With, “The fire’s broke out again it seems!”
But after all, when the fire is out,
The smoke is gone, and you want to shout!
You’re back in camp and your fighting’s done;
With pencil in hand you’re writing home
Of the weeks that’s past, and the fight that’s won.
While searching for the cache, you can find three bench marks close by. If you have never found a bench mark, the easiest one is directly south of the tower and in very good shape. You can search for benchmarks on www.geocaching.com by using the following three symbols for the marks in this area.
RJ1124
RJ1123
RJ1267
Also very close to the tower is a Letter Box that I found while searching for a hiding place for this cache.
If you are interested in CCC camps and fire towers, visit the following two caches in the area.
1. The Baby and the Bear (GC12FFF)
N46 28.320
W084 40.562
Tragic story of a little girl taken from the base of a fire tower in the late 1940's
2. Deer Camp 2 Raco CCC Camp # 667 (GCGJ9K)
N 46 22.009
W084 44.328
Many foundations can still be seen from the buildings and a chimney is still standing after over 60 years.
Cache is a short walk South West of tower to keep mugglers from finding it. Take your camera as a great picture of the tower can be taken from the spot where you find the cache.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Haqre