Abandoned Appalachia Series – The Beschman (Putney) Lookout Tower of Harlan County
High on the spine of Pine Mountain, above the little community of Putney and the deep crease of the Clover Fork valley, a steel skeleton still climbs into the sky. Locals call it Beschman Tower or simply the Putney fire tower. For decades it watched over Kentenia State Forest, part of a web of lookouts, ranger stations, and truck trails that turned Harlan County into one of Kentucky’s most closely guarded forest districts. Today the tower is rusting and partly dismantled, yet it remains a landmark in both the landscape and the county’s memory.
This is the story of how it came to be, how it was used, and why people still hike up to stand in its shadow.
Kentenia State Forest and the Need for a Lookout
The story of Beschman Tower begins long before the first steel section went up. In 1919 Kentucky created its first state forest in Harlan County, setting aside thousands of acres on the south face of Pine Mountain as Kentenia State Forest.
Kentenia lay in a region where wildfire was a constant threat. In 1922 a series of burns around Pine Mountain Settlement School scorched some four thousand acres and prompted students and staff to petition the governor for a stronger forestry service. School forester Leon Deschamps and the children who fought those fires documented the losses in vivid detail.
Those same Pine Mountain records later looked back and noted that there were no fire towers on Pine Mountain until after 1937 or 1938, even as state and local officials were working toward better fire protection.
By the late 1920s, state foresters were ready to put steel on the ridge.
Planning a Steel Tower Above Putney
On May 23, 1929, the Advocate Messenger in Danville carried a brief notice that would shape the future skyline of Harlan County. It reported that G. Y. Bell, assistant state forester, and S. D. Suiter, district forester, representing the Kentucky Forest Service, were engineering construction of a one hundred foot steel lookout tower on top of Pine Mountain opposite Putney.
That small item anchors the tower in time and in the state’s fire control plans. It tells us that by 1929 Kentucky officials had chosen the crest above Putney as a strategic vantage point. From that knob a lookout could scan north and south across the Clover Fork and toward the headwaters of the Cumberland River, tying Harlan’s early state forest into a wider network of fire detection.
Modern mapping tools confirm what the foresters saw. United States Geological Survey topographic maps for the Nolansburg quadrangle label a “Beschman Lookout Tower” on the ridge line, and GNIS-based gazetteers list Beschman Lookout Tower as a tower feature with coordinates on Pine Mountain in Harlan County.
Later online mapping sites such as Mindat and Mapcarta repeat those coordinates and record the alternate names “Putney Fire Tower” and “Putney Lookout Tower,” showing how local usage and official records converged over time.
New Deal Work, CCC Trails, and the Putney Ranger Station
If 1929 gives us the design stage, the New Deal era reveals the physical network that made the tower useful. Across Appalachia, the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads, fire trails, telephone lines, and lookout towers to tighten control over remote forest land.
Harlan County was no exception. Pine Mountain’s slopes hosted CCC projects that connected Kentenia’s interior to the valleys below, much like CCC crews elsewhere in Kentucky built single lane “truck trails” and lines of poles linking towers to ranger offices.
At the foot of the mountain, the state raised a substantial log ranger station in the late 1930s, using local stone and timber. Tourism and heritage accounts describe the Putney Ranger Station as Kentucky’s oldest ranger station, built around 1937 and positioned beside Kentenia State Forest so that rangers could live on site and coordinate fire responses.
Over time the Putney Ranger Station gained a second life in local lore. Harlan County tourism materials fold it into their “Mountains of Mystery” tour, describing stories of phantom footsteps, unexplained noises, and rangers who seem to remain on duty even after death.
The ranger station has never quite slipped into ruin. In the twenty first century Harlan County fiscal court has sought funding and bids to restore the building’s historic fabric, including a continuing effort to rehabilitate its original windows rather than replace them.
Taken together, the tower on the crest and the ranger station in the hollow form a classic New Deal era fire control pair, even if the initial tower plan predates Roosevelt’s programs.
Mountain Day Hikes and School Traditions
For students at Pine Mountain Settlement School, the Putney tower was more than a piece of state infrastructure. It became a destination.
The school’s year by year histories record that on Mountain Day, October 9, 1940, students hiked to the Putney Fire Tower, turning the lookout into part of an annual ritual that mixed outdoor education, dancing, and community.
A later history for the 1946–47 school year notes another Mountain Day walk to Putney Tower. The account describes how some of the tower steps had to be repaired with boards from a truck tailgate so that small groups of five students at a time could climb safely to the cab.
Photographs from Pine Mountain’s collections fill in the picture. The Birdena Bishop photo album includes multiple images labeled “Fire Tower in Kentenia State Forest” and “Me and kids at Putney Fire Tower,” showing staff and children picnicking near the base and looking out from the platforms.
These images capture the tower already in steady use by the 1940s, a familiar part of the school’s landscape and a symbol of both conservation and modernity.
Rangers on the Ridge
Mid century newspaper items and photographs give us glimpses of the tower’s working life. A 1968 feature in the Harlan Daily Enterprise, reproduced in Pine Mountain’s forest history materials, shows Ed Smith, the ranger at Putney fire tower, holding an “Indian grain grinder” stone found near the site.
The article underscores how the fire tower world overlapped with archaeology, local history, and everyday life. Rangers were not only scanning for smoke. They were moving through a landscape layered with older Native and settler histories, picking up artifacts and stories as they went.
Pine Mountain Settlement’s biography of William Hayes, a forester who worked for the Kentucky Department of Conservation’s Division of Forestry, notes that he served in the Kentenia Unit at Putney. A 1963 photo captioned “Putney Tower in the Kentenia State Forest” shows the steel structure firmly in mid century service.
By then the tower was part of a statewide network connected by telephone and later radio, tied directly into district ranger offices that could mobilize trucks, crews, and equipment when a fire report came in.
Mapping, Renaming, and Watching the Sky
As fire towers aged, many were removed or repurposed. Beschman Tower, though battered, survived long enough to be folded into scientific and recreational work.
Modern geospatial sites cluster data under the name “Beschman Lookout Tower,” listing its coordinates and classifying it as a tower feature atop Pine Mountain.
In the mid 2000s, Kentucky’s Wildlife Diversity Program used aerial imagery to identify potential raptor migration monitoring sites along Pine Mountain. Of five possible locations, biologists selected the Putney Tower site in Harlan County as the most suitable and conducted a pilot raptor migration count there, with plans for further counts when conditions allowed.
That brief mention may be the only time Beschman Tower appears in the scientific literature, but it shows that even in semi abandonment the structure still offered an ideal view of the sky for hawks and eagles riding the ridge winds.
From Fire Lookout to Rusted Relic
By the late twentieth century airplanes, helicopters, lightning detection systems, and modern communications made many fire towers redundant. Across Kentucky, the U.S. Forest Service and state agencies began retiring towers in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beschman Tower followed that pattern. Local accounts and field reports say that the tower was decommissioned around the 1970s, its lower flights of stairs deliberately removed to discourage climbing and reduce liability. Over time metal rails rusted, and the wooden landings and cab floor rotted away or were vandalized.
Yet the main steel frame stayed upright. Modern photographs in hiking guides and abandoned structure galleries show a tall steel tower rising out of second growth forest, with a makeshift wooden ladder nailed up to the first landing and badly decayed boards above.
A Kentucky hiking site that documents the tower calls it “a nice piece of history” along the Little Shepherd Trail and warns that climbing the structure is at best foolish, urging visitors to enjoy the view from the ground or from nearby overlooks instead.
Online communities echo that caution. A Facebook group post titled “Putney Ky. Views from the Fire Tower” shares photos and memories of climbing years ago, but emphasizes how the structure has deteriorated and how dangerous it has become.
Ghost Stories on the Ridge
Harlan County’s tourism and storytelling culture has embraced Pine Mountain as a landscape where history and hauntings overlap. The Putney Ranger Station appears in “Haunted Harlan County” materials as a place of strange winds, flying objects, and sounds that resemble rangers still at work.
Given the close historic link between the station and the tower, it is no surprise that many locals fold Beschman Tower into the same atmosphere of mountain lore. The ridge where it stands is also home to stories of tragic deaths and unsolved cases, including the long unidentified “Mountain Jane Doe” found near Little Shepherd Trail and the earlier murder of teacher Lura Parsons on the opposite side of Pine Mountain.
In community memory, then, Beschman Tower is not just a piece of steel. It is part of a haunted district, a stage on which stories of watchfulness, danger, and unresolved grief continue to play out.
Finding Beschman Tower Today
Today the tower still stands on the crest of Pine Mountain in Kentenia State Forest, just off the paved Little Shepherd Trail. Modern guides place the trailhead at a pull off near Goss Park, with a short but steep path climbing west from the road to the base of the structure. GPS waypoints put the trailhead near 36.9250 north, 83.2243 west, and the tower itself slightly north along the ridge.
Hiking descriptions and field reports all stress the same points. The walk up is relatively short but can be slick or overgrown in wet weather. The tower is in poor repair. Some visitors have built a makeshift ladder to the first landing, but the wood is rotted. The safest choice is to stay on the ground, appreciate the engineering, and take in the view of Kentenia’s ridges, the headwaters of the Cumberland River, and Black Mountain on the horizon.
Nearby stops like the Putney Ranger Station, Kentenia’s trailheads, and the overlooks along Little Shepherd Trail round out the picture. Rangers and county officials are working to restore the ranger station’s fabric while still discouraging trespassing at the abandoned tower site, a delicate balance between preservation, safety, and respect for state property.
Anyone visiting should follow posted signs, avoid climbing the tower, and pack out all trash. Beschman Tower has survived nearly a century of storms, fires, and changing technology; it deserves to stand a while longer without new scars.
Why Beschman Tower Matters
From a historian’s perspective, the Beschman or Putney Lookout Tower is valuable for several reasons.
First, it ties Harlan County directly into the early history of forest conservation in Kentucky. The 1929 newspaper notice shows state foresters investing in steel and sightlines at just the moment when Kentenia State Forest and Blanton Forest were becoming symbols of a new conservation ethic in the county.
Second, it is a textbook example of how New Deal era infrastructure was layered onto older state initiatives. The original tower plan sits on the eve of the Depression. The CCC era brings truck trails, telephone lines, and the Putney Ranger Station that allowed the tower to function as part of a coordinated system.
Third, the tower is unusually well documented in the photographic and textual record thanks to Pine Mountain Settlement School. Mountain Day hikes, student snapshots, and staff memoirs preserve images of the structure in active use as part of a living school tradition, not just as an anonymous piece of equipment.
Fourth, Beschman Tower’s afterlife as a raptor survey point, a hiking destination, and a magnet for local folklore shows how structures can move from utilitarian roles into the realm of memory, recreation, and legend.
Finally, the tower stands as a fragile remnant of a once dense network. Across Kentucky many fire towers have already been removed or heavily altered. Beschman’s rusting frame, still in place on the ridge above Putney, keeps the story of forest protection and New Deal era labor visible in steel and concrete rather than only in photographs and footnotes.
In that sense, the old lookout is still doing its job. It calls our attention to the forests that surround it, to the people who labored to protect them, and to the complicated ways Appalachian landscapes blend conservation, industry, and story. As long as Beschman Tower stands against the sky, it will remain a silent but eloquent witness to the past century on Pine Mountain.
Sources & Further Reading
Advocate-Messenger (Danville, KY). “G.Y. Bell, assistant state forester, of Frankfort, and S.D. Suiter, district forester, of Pineville, who represent the Kentucky Forest Service, are engineering the construction of a 100-foot steel lookout tower on top of Pine Mountain, opposite Putney.” May 23, 1929. Quoted in “Putney,” Eastern US Lookouts. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/putney.html
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “Dancing in the Cabbage Patch: Forests and Fires.” Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=55550
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “HISTORY PMSS II – 1940–1941.” Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=56474
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “HISTORY PMSS III – 1946–1947.” Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=56543
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “William Hayes – Student Staff and Board – Part II.” Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=58213
Pine Mountain Settlement School. “William Hayes – Native American Collection.” Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=70625
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Kentenia State Forest Information (Public Hunting Area Location).” PDF map and area description, April 6, 2020. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://fw.ky.gov/More/Documents/KenteniaStateForest_ALL.pdf
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Wildlife Diversity Program report (raptor migration surveys at Pine Mountain State Park, Kingdom Come State Park, and Putney Tower, Harlan County).” c. 2000s. Accessed via Yumpu, December 26, 2025. https://www.yumpu.com
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, Division of Forestry. “Kentenia State Forest.” Kentucky State Forests information page, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Forestry/ky-state-forests/Pages/Kentenia-State-Forest.aspx
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. “Kentenia State Forest.” Locations, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://eec.ky.gov/Nature-Preserves/Locations/pages/kentenia.aspx
Harlan County Trails. “Ranger Station.” HarlanCountyTrails.com, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.harlancountytrails.com/haunted-harlan-county-tour/ranger-station/
Harlan County Trails. “25 Historic Stops in Harlan County.” HarlanCountyTrails.com, September 8, 2021. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.harlancountytrails.com/blog/25-historic-stops-in-harlan-county/
Harlan County Trails. “Eye Popping Leaf Peeping.” HarlanCountyTrails.com, September 15, 2022. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.harlancountytrails.com/blog/eye-popping-leaf-peeping/
Asher, Joe. “Funding sought to restore Putney Ranger Station.” Harlan Daily Enterprise, April 26, 2019. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://harlanenterprise.net/2019/04/26/funding-sought-to-restore-putney-fire-station/
Asher, Joe. “County still seeking proposals for Ranger Station rehab.” Harlan Daily Enterprise, December 4, 2025. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://harlanenterprise.net/2025/12/04/county-still-seeking-bids-for-ranger-station-rehab/
Asher, Joe. “County still looking for ranger station project options.” Harlan Daily Enterprise, December 26, 2025. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://harlanenterprise.net/2025/12/26/county-still-looking-for-ranger-station-project-options/
James, Connor. “‘Too important to lose’: locals work to restore former Putney Ranger Station.” WYMT News, April 30, 2019. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.wymt.com/content/news/Too-important-to-lose-locals-work-to-restore-former-Putney-Ranger-Station–509281011.html
Durham, George. “Putney Ky. Views from the Fire Tower.” Facebook post in Scenic Harlan Co. and surrounding area group, c. 2019. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/groups/789010344491250/posts/2293213654070904/
“The Crafty Crow Show.” “Searching For An Old Fire Tower in Harlan, Ky.” YouTube video, c. 7:00, posted c. 2022. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKdlPfTNCdU
“Exploring Beschman Fire Tower in Harlan Kentucky.” YouTube video, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_ImKgqXAfU
“Fire Tower Ride Harlan, KY.” YouTube video, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmrYn0rrGkE
Forest Fire Lookout Association. “Putney.” Eastern US Lookouts, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://easternuslookouts.weebly.com/putney.html
Harr, Michael. “Putney (Beschman) Lookout Tower.” Kentucky Hiker, September 10, 2020. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.kentuckyhiker.com/latest/2020/9/10/putney-beschman-lookout-tower
Harr, Michael. “Little Shepherd Trail KY-2010 Overlook.” Kentucky Hiker, September 10, 2020. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.kentuckyhiker.com/latest/2020/9/10/little-shepherd-trail-ky-2010-overlook
Harr, Michael. “Pine Mountain.” Kentucky Hiker, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.kentuckyhiker.com/pine-mountain
American Byways. “Little Shepherd Trail.” AmericanByways.com, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://americanbyways.com/destination/little-shepherd-trail/
American Byways. “Autumn Along the Cumberland Mountains.” AmericanByways.com, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://americanbyways.com/autumn-along-the-cumberland-mountains/
Kentucky Heritage Council. “Available Historic Contexts” (listing including The New Deal Builds: A Historic Context of the New Deal in East Kentucky, 1933–1943). Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Environmental-Protection/waste/underground-storage-tanks/Pages/historic-contexts.aspx
Topozone. “Beschman Lookout Tower Topo Map in Harlan County KY.” TopoZone.com, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/harlan-ky/tower/beschman-lookout-tower/
Mapcarta. “Beschman Lookout Tower – Harlan, Kentucky, USA.” Mapcarta.com, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://mapcarta.com/20913674
GeoNames. “Beschman Lookout Tower, United States.” GeoNames.org, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.geonames.org/4283998
Mindat.org. “Beschman Lookout Tower, Harlan County, Kentucky, United States.” Mindat.org, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://www.mindat.org/feature-4283998.html
“Kentenia State Forest.” Mindtrip.ai trip overview, n.d. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://mindtrip.ai/attraction/putney-kentucky/kentenia-state-forest/at-cfh8MAWD
Abandoned. “Fire Lookout Towers.” AbandonedOnline.net, March 31, 2022. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://abandonedonline.net/location/fire-lookout-towers/
Abandoned. “Autumn Flyover of Abandoned Tater Knob Lookout Tower.” AbandonedOnline.net, October 11, 2022. Accessed December 26, 2025. https://abandonedonline.net/autumn-flyover-of-abandoned-tater-knob-lookout-tower/
Author’s Note: If you are looking for a laid-back weekend spot, the Beschman / Putney tower ridge is a great place to check out, with big views and a lot of history in a small radius. There are campgrounds and primitive sites close by, so you can spend the day exploring Pine Mountain and the evenings just relaxing by a fire.