Friends of Stissing Landmarks looks back on 40 years of preservation

PINE PLAINS — In 1986, New York announced plans to tear down Pine Plains’ 50 year old fire tower. There was only one problem: Pine Plains, and its young town supervisor, wanted to keep it.

Town Supervisor Scott Chase set out to preserve the tower, leading him to form the Friends of Stissing Landmarks and set out on a journey that continues to preserve and rehabilitate historic sites across the town 40 years later.

Chase’s cause was rooted in his personal history — climbing the Stissing Mountain Fire Tower was a rite of passage in Pine Plains, and provided an unforgettable view of the surrounding. But after years of disuse, the tower had fallen into disrepair. Fire watchers had been replaced by aerial surveillance. Their stations, relics from the Civilian Conservation Corps, were being abandoned. In 1978, a particularly raucous party on the mountain left the ranger’s cabin a pile of ash, leaving behind the stone stairs and some pieces of foundation.

So Chase, along with friends and neighbors from across Pine Plains, decided to do something about it. But it would be a while before the Friends of Stissing Landmarks could actually start to preserve these relics of the town’s past.

One of the early enthusiasts was Bill Hedges, who is still an active FOSL member. “I grew up on a farm that’s on the other side of Stissing Tower,” Hedges said. “I had climbed the tower since I was 10 years old. When the forest ranger was up there, we would hitch a ride up in his Jeep.”

First, they needed to voice their objections. When New York’s Commissioner of Environmental Conservation Henry Williams came to town, stumping for Governor Mario Cuomo, Scott Chase — 32 at the time — saw an opportunity to save the tower. After Williams’ stump speech, Chase cornered the commissioner. “Besides being supervisor, I was a land use planner at the time, and Williams was too,” Chase said. “I told him we have some real concerns, and we wanted to keep our fire tower.”

Williams’ response was shockingly supportive. The state didn’t want to take down the fire towers either — they had simply become outdated. The fire towers had become a liability. “He said, ‘If you would like the tower, I’m happy to figure something out where you can have it,’” Chase recalls.

Williams did have one word of advice: don’t make it the town’s responsibility. Give it to a non-profit.

But starting a non-profit proved more complicated than it sounded. When Chase and his co-founders Bill Hedges and Jay Wilmarth looked for a survey of the land, they couldn’t find one.

“No one knew whose property the tower stood on,” said Chase. “In the ‘30s nobody wanted to spend the time and effort to actually survey.”

When they were constructing the fire towers, the Department of Environmental Conservation used what’s called an administrative easement to use the property. Administrative easements allow public entities to access the land without changing ownership. When they first built the tower, the DEC filed easements with four different property owners.

Fortuitously, Scott Chase’s brother Lyndon was a licensed land surveyor. Over the course of his new survey, Lyndon determined the property was owned by The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy is a global environmental agency, and one of the largest landowners in the world. It owns over 125 million acres worldwide, and when Chase reached out, he discovered they didn’t want to deal with the fire tower’s liability any more than the state of New York.

“They were not excited to learn about this property,” Chase said. “Not only were they happy to give the acreage, they found us an attorney who helped set it all up legally.” With The Nature Conservancy’s help, FOSL became an official entity.

It took 8 years after Henry Williams’ blessing before the Friends of Stissing Landmarks finally had their fire tower. In the meantime, Chase, Hedges, and the rest of the team had set about re-painting the structure, and added back a staircase that had been removed by the state. “We decided it was better to beg for forgiveness,” Hedges said with a laugh.

They also got to work on the trails. FOSL rehabilitated the existing trail and added a new, less steep path that takes a longer route to the top.

From there, the group stayed abreast of other properties that became available. FOSL acquired about 30 acres on the southwestern cove of Stissing Lake and built a trail. It’s called the Jay Trail in honor of founding member Jay Wilmarth, who passed away several years ago. Jay was instrumental in those early days, communicating with the Department of Conservation and keeping everything above board. More recently, the group hired Brian Sikora, a sustainability trail specialist who had worked with the Dutchess Land Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy. He helped cut the second ascent to the fire tower, and expanded the network of trails and boardwalks around Thompson Pond.

“Some of the things that FOSL has done is a public-private partnership between the town and the private entity,” said Chase. “We’re trying to help each other out with a long-term trails plan.”

Most recently, FOSL acquired kayak access to a private Twin Island Lake — better known as Mud Pond.

There are plans to keep expanding the town’s trails, using the rail beds from trains that used to run south to Poughkeepsie, east to Millerton, and west to Rhinebeck and Red Hook. It’s part of plan Chase devised while he was chair of the town’s bike and trails committee. But while the group has traditionally been focused on trails and nature conservation, an opportunity in 2021 encouraged FOSL to expand its scope.

It started with another entity entirely. Chase is also on the board of the Little Nine Partners Historical Society, so named for the land grant bequeathed to 9 wealthy landowners in 1743. That grant covered modern-day North East, Pine Plains, and Milan. The historical society already managed Pine Plains’ Graham Brush House. But when the owners of another historic structure, Patchin’s Mill, approached the historical society about taking over their property, the group declined.

“At the time, that board was a little dysfunctional with interpersonal conflicts,” said Chase. “We already had our hands full trying to maintain and restore the Graham Brush House. There was just no way we could take on another.”

Chase brought the idea to FOSL next — and at first, they were reluctant too. “We all looked at each other around the table for a couple of months, swallowed hard and said, ‘Let’s do it,” said Chase.

“We weren’t really excited about taking on the mill project,” added Bill Hedges. “But we were just sitting there watching it deteriorate. And at times, it’s been overwhelming. But we’ve made tremendous progress, and we’ve gotten to a point where we can save it.”

This spring, the group set to work. The mill’s foundation and siding — badly damaged by time and multiple car crashes — were replaced, and FOSL has plans to restore the interior before moving to the Patchin house across the street that came with the mill. Fundraising efforts are ongoing.

“It takes so much time and effort to maintain buildings,” said Chase. “We were not intending to get heavily involved in buildings, but somebody had to do it. We knew when we were getting into this that it was going to take a lot of our efforts away from the trails. I still want to press for FOSL and the community to go back to the long range trail plan.”

Still, FOSL is busier than ever. And its mission remains.

“You can sit there and criticize things when they don’t come together, but if we had done nothing, they would have taken the tower down,” said Bill Hedges. “And the mill would’ve disappeared. It takes organizations like ours to step forward and do it. It’s really difficult to do without a tremendous amount of support from the community, and so far we’ve got that.”

The only stormcloud on the horizon is the core members’ advancing age. “Bill’s 80 years old, and I’m 72,” Scott Chase said, laughing. “And two years ago we went and put a new roof on the Patchin house!”

“I think our goal in the next year or two is to recruit as many new members as we can,” said Hedges. “One thing we did last year is tie in with Pine Plains Central School District, and we got students to volunteer for community service. We got so much done with the students involved.”