The town of Tompkins was awarded $4,000 by the Preservation League of New York State to begin the processing of restoring a historic fire tower.
The grant will fund a building condition report of the Rock Rift Fire Observation Tower, located on the Cannonsville Reservoir near the towns of Walton and Hancock, according to Tompkins Town Supervisor Bill Layton.
“The plan is to fix it up and make it accessible,” he said.
The 68-foot steel structure was built in 1934 by workers with the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the “alphabet soup” agencies implemented by Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal. The tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
The Rock Rift tower was among several maintained by New York state as part of the forest fire observation and prevention measures enacted throughout the early 20th century, Layton said.
New York City purchased the parcel of land in 1957 as part of its 1,600-square-mile West-of-Hudson Watershed.