New Jersey opens its first new fire tower in 78 years after rash of recent wildfires
Veterans Tower in Jackson, Ocean County, is 133 feet tall and designed to act as a sentinel for 516,000 residents and 200,000 homes.
Citing a rash of wildfires in recent years, New Jersey officials on Wednesday opened the state’s first fire tower in 78 years.
The increase in fires, they say, is attributed at least in part to climate change.
The new structure in Ocean County, known as Veterans Tower, becomes part of a statewide network of 21 fire towers.
Located off East Veterans Highway in Jackson, it is 133 feet tall and designed to act as a sentinel for 516,000 residents and 200,000 homes across Ocean and Monmouth Counties.
John Cecil, assistant commissioner for state parks, forests, and historic sites, said in an announcement on the tower’s dedication that it is “more important than ever to ensure we have eyes in the sky.“
Cecil cited the effects of climate change, including an increase in the number of annual fire-prone weather days.
Peak wildfire season in New Jersey runs from mid-March through mid-May.
Recent wildfires
New Jersey has seen an uptick in wildfires in recent years, with some of the harshest in Ocean County.
In 2024, the “Shotgun Fire“ started near a shooting range and burned 350 acres in the Pinelands near Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area in the area of Stump Tavern Road in Jackson Township. Six buildings had been threatened and evacuated.
And in 2025, an illegal bonfire ignited the state’s worst wildfire since at least 2012. The Jones Road Wildfire scorched 15,300 acres, destroyed a commercial building, vehicles, and some of the state’s prized Atlantic white cedar forests as it burned through areas dense with wildlife.
Pinpointing wildfire locations
The new tower is at the New Jersey Forest Service’s Forest Resource Education Center and State Tree Nursery in Jackson.
It replaces the former Lakewood Fire Tower, which was five miles east in Lakewood, Ocean County. A 100-year lease for that tower expired in 2024.
Bill Donnelly, chief of the state Forest Fire Service, said he started his career in a fire tower.
“I know how critical the information relayed from fire observers is to crews on the ground when every second counts to save lives and property,” Donnelly said.
He said the tower serves an area of the state with a “significant amount of wildland-urban interface, which is where human development is intertwined with the forest.”
The tower, built by Fitzpatrick & Associates Inc. of Eatontown for $2 million, was funded through the state’s Corporate Business Tax.
New Jersey’s fire towers are staffed when forests are dry enough to burn. Trained observers take weather readings, scan the horizon for signs of smoke, and interpret smoke and fire behavior.
They work with other towers to triangulate and pinpoint locations of possible wildfires, and dispatch crews to investigate.
Tower observers are often able to detect fires before 9-1-1 calls start coming in.
According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, “New Jersey has some of the most volatile forest fuels in the nation, particularly in the southern part of the state where shrub and tree types can fuel large and rapidly spreading fires.”
Officials say that fuel is comparable to chaparral shrub lands found in California and southern Oregon.