About 60 firefighters spent most of Monday battling a blaze off Vannoy Road in McGrady. By the time the wildfire was sufficiently extinguished and efforts were concluded about 5 p.m. Monday, said Assistant County Ranger Mickey Parsons of the N.C. Forest Service, it had burned through about 50 acres of timber - mostly middle age yellow poplar. Parsons said the fire started along Vannoy Road about two miles from where it intersects with N.C. 18 North and about eight miles from its intersection with Old N.C. 16. He said the fire is being investigated as an arson case due to the lack of any apparent accidental cause. It was in the Osborne Creek drainage on a 300-acre tract belonging to Cy Brame of North Wilkesboro. It burned up one steep side of a mountain and down the other side. Parsons said he responded to a report of the fire about 6:45 a.m. Monday and had trouble locating it due to large amounts of smoke in steep valleys along Vannoy Road. He said the smoke was from the fire he was looking for and a 40-acre wildfire on Widow Mountain on the other side of N.C. 18 in McGrady Sunday night. The cause of the Widow Mountain fire hasn't been determined. Jeff Bumgarner built a fire line around most of the fire with a forest service bulldozer. Part of it was also built by firefighters using fire rakes also, he said.