ORANGE — The Mount Cardigan fire tower reopened this summer, after six months of construction, giving the three fire lookouts who work there a more comfortable spot to search for smoke.

The new cabin, also known as a cab, boasts a metal railing, opposed to the old wooden one, and double pane windows.

“It’s really nice,” said Alton Hennessy, fire lookout and Canaan fire captain. “In the cold weather it’s less drafty, the new windows are a big upgrade and a big help. With the higher ceiling it feels like there’s a lot more room in the tower.”

The new construction replaces a 100-year-old cabin, which had leaky windows, rotting wooden siding and lead paint, that had been on the state’s radar for replacement for a decade.

The Cardigan tower, which is usually staffed May through October, reopened in June when the fire scouting equipment was hauled back up the mountain.

It had been out of commission beginning in July of 2023 when the old cab was demolished.

To assemble the new cab, workers constructed four walls on the mountain in a matter of hours on a windy day last October. That same day, a helicopter placed a new roof atop the walls. Construction wrapped up last December.

Like the old one, the new cab is 100-square-feet and sparsely furnished.

“We have our map and our fire finder and other than that that’s really it,” Hennessy said.

The cab has new maps, a new pair of binoculars and an upgraded radio, as well as a 100-year-old restored Osborne fire finder — a flat, round contraption that is 2-feet in diameter and used to pinpoint the exact location of a fire.

“In order to find a fire you really need three towers to triangulate,” said Bill Bellion, Canaan’s special deputy warden.

Each of the three towers use a fire finder to run a line on a map, where the three lines touch is where the fire is. It’s possible to locate a fire with just one tower if the fire scout is “very knowledgeable” about the terrain, Bellion said.

The state operates 15 fire towers which are manned during “periods of high fire danger.” The purpose of the towers is to detect fires early before they become catastrophic, according to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The state received $1.2 million in federal money through the American Rescue Plan Act to replace both the cab on Cardigan, and the cab on a fire tower on Belknap Mountain in northern New Hampshire.

Careno Construction, of Portsmouth, N.H., completed the work with help from Connecticut-based Valley Restoration.

About 250 wildfires occur in New Hampshire annually, burning, on average, an acre of land each.

Since Sept. 6, 2023, there have been 52 wildfires in the state, which have burned 49.5 acres, according to New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau Chief Steven Sherman.

While it is unknown how many fires are detected from fire watch towers across the state, Hennessy, who has worked in the Cardigan fire tower for three years, said, “It’s pretty hit or miss. It could be you see three (fires) in a day, it could be you spend three or four shifts up there without seeing any.”

The goal is for the Cardigan cab to be occupied each weekend, but with low visibility, rainy weather conditions, and limited availability of the scouts, the new cab has only been staffed a handful of times since it re-opened in June.

In New Hampshire there is a “split fire season” said Chris Guiterman, research scientist for NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.

It’s both in the “spring between snow melt and green up” and again in autumn when the forest floor is covered in oak leaves.

“We don’t get the big burns like we see out west but I believe there are much more brush fires than we know of because there are small fires that get put out quickly,” he said.

But forest fires aren’t all bad, Guiterman added. “Fire is not this monolithic evil thing. It certainly can be catastrophic, but when it behaves well, it’s a powerful tool.”

Controlled burns are important for soil nutrients and creating open space in the woods.

Native Americans used controlled burns “to clear areas for crops and travel, to manage the land for specific species of both plants and animals, to hunt game,” and to prevent larger, out of control forest fires, according to the National Park Service.

Putting out spontaneous forest fires is important but he would like to see more resources allotted for the “prescribed fire that most ecosystems need,” Guiterman said.

The fire tower cabs on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard and Federal Hill in Milford are the last cabs “in need of significant work to refurbish them,” said Sherman, of the state’s forest protection bureau.

They are scheduled to be restored by the end of the year.

Hikers can reach the new Cardigan fire tower cab by making the mile-and-a-half hike to the summit. If staffed, hikers can go inside and learn about locating fires from the fire scouts themselves.