Fighting Forest Fires in Texas

Many associate Texas with rolling plains, prairies and desert. Yet woodlands dominate the eastern quarter of Texas, the Post Oak belt and especially the Piney Woods in East Texas. The Piney Woods are the heart of Texas’s timber industry. Fire was always a concern.

Fire in the Piney Woods: Texas Lookout Towers, the Forest Service, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, by Edward Cavallerano, offers a history of firefighting and forest conservation in the Piney Woods. It examines the area’s lookout towers. It provides a history and accounting of every fire lookout tower in Texas.

Cavallerano opens with an introduction to forestry in Texas. He next describes the Piney Woods, its nature and natural history. He discusses commercial logging in the area, presenting its economic and ecological impact.

This is followed by an examination of forest protection and fire control techniques, tools, and technology. Cavallerano presents the development of the Piney Woods fire control, the state government’s vision of creating and sustaining forestry and logging. He explains how the fire lookout system works and how it evolved in Texas.

Then he presents a decade-by-decade history of forest conservation in the Piney Woods, starting in the 1920s and running through the end of the 20th century. This was the period when the lookout tower system started, grew, reached a climax, and eventually faded away.

Cavallerano covers every aspect of the program. He presents the people involved and the roles they played. He shows what life was like for firefighting personnel. He shows how technology molded forest firefighting and how changing technology altered it. He discusses the role different government organizations, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Forestry Service, and the Texas Forestry Service, played. He shows the intersection of government and civilian activities, including cooperation and friction between those inside and outside government.

He weaves his story using archival documentation, interviews, and even poetry written by participants. He also presents the evolution of the hardware and the progress made over nearly a century.

Fire in the Piney Woods offers much to any fan of the old lookout towers who wants information on where they are and how to visit them. It is a book that those interested in the Piney Woods and its history will enjoy reading.

“Fire in the Piney Woods: Texas Lookout Towers, the Forest Service, and the Civilian Conservation Corps,” by Edward Cavallerano, Texas A&M University Press, 2025, 352 pages, $45.00 (Hardcover) $19.95 (E-book)