There was a time when designated volunteers kept watch over the national forest and helped protect it from wildfire. They had signs posted along the county road at their homes denoting their status as 'National Forest Warden'. Each man was trained in fire fighting, granted the authority to issue burning permits, and responsible for maintaining a cache of fire tools.

	Fire caches were tall red metal storage bins, shown here in this 1937 photo, with enough tools and water for a ten man crew.
The tools varied from the rubber "flappers" being examined here by this warden, used in grass fires, to broom rakes for leaf fires, and shovels and backpack water cans. The tools were to be kept clean and in good condition.
Herbert Dale Harrell was a Hoosier National Forest fire warden from 1956 to 1998. Harrell's home on Henderson Creek Road, south of what is now the Charles C. Deam Wilderness, was a well-known landmark, known for it's wooden "National Forest Warden" sign and the bright red fire cache.

Harrell may well have served, at 42 years of service, longer than any other National Forest warden. He was presented one of the prestigious National Volunteer Awards from the Chief of the Forest Service.

Harrell's Story

Harrell, 78, and his wife Violet, 74, grew up in the Henderson Creek area. Violet's parents had the farm across the road from the Harrell farm, and she can't remember a time when she didn't know her husband. She was just a schoolgirl when WWII broke out, but remembers well Harrell joining the Navy. He served six years in the Navy. His ship was coming in to Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese bombed the port there. His ship heard the distress call from the port as the bombs were dropped and the ship's captain turned the ship. Violet said although it was over 50 years ago, she still gets frightened thinking how close he may have come to being at Pearl Harbor during the attack.

After the war, the Harrell's were married, and though Dale farmed some, he was soon hired by the U.S. Post Office as a mail carrier. He worked for the Post Office for a total of 33 years carrying mail on rural routes. Violet said no matter what he was doing, her husband always loved to fight fire. "If he saw a smoke, he'd drop what he was doing and run" she laughs. So when the Forest was looking for men to serve as fire wardens, Dale Harrell was an obvious choice.

She said the main duties Dale had as fire warden was keeping the tools maintained and inventoried. He had to attend some training that the Forest Service put on, and have meetings with the local men who helped fight fire. When a fire was reported, if it was during the school day, he'd call up Heltonville School, load up the tools and meet the boys at the fire. At that time, most of the junior and senior-high boys were trained in fire fighting and were always let out of school to help out.

Sometimes though, the call might come in the middle of the night. "It didn't matter," Violet recalls, "Dale would jump out of bed and maybe fight fire all night, then hurry home in the morning and go run his mail route." She said Harrell always had rolls of maps around, and when he heard there was a fire, he'd spread them out and figure out who to call to help, and how to send people in. Often he worked with the towermen to help them figure out where the fire was located before dispatching a crew to fight the fire.

Violet remembers the largest fire on the Forest during their watch started up near Dutch Ridge. It was sometime in the 50's she recalls, and it took off and was moving fast. Someone called and told her husband to bring his tools and come quick.

Violet said at the time Dale was sick. He had to have been very sick she muses, or nothing could have kept him from going to help. But they needed the tools so she resolved to take them up herself. She couldn't drive Dale's truck, so she loaded them up in her brand new car and drove up by Hardin Ridge. A Forest Service man flagged her down and told her, "Lady you'll have to leave, we have a fire up ahead and I'm not allowed to let you through." She chuckles remembering how he changed his story when he found out she had a trunk full of fire tools.

In that case, the fire was started by an old man was burning off his garden plot on a windy day. The fire got away from him and spread into the woods. Before it was out it was to burn over 2,000 acres and spread for about 6 miles. The fire had flames 30-40 feet high. Most fires in those days, Violet recalls, were set by arsonist. She said there was one old man they discovered was setting fires when he ran out of tobacco. He'd then wait for the firefighters to show up and try to bum tobacco off the fire fighters. She's glad that they've now got most of the arson fires stopped and that in general there are now very few wild fires on the Forest. "I think people understand better how damaging fires are," she said, "and people are just more careful than they used to be."

Dale was always an avid hunter and is shown here several years ago with one of the first wild turkeys harvested on the Hoosier. The Harrell's raised three children, two girls and a son. Their son worked for the Forest Service for several years. Violet said Dale was always trying to figure out a way he could help out. In the early 1990's he decided it would be a good thing to document the locations and sites of all the old homesteads, buildings, and crossroad communities which were once throughout the northern part of what is now mostly forest area. He realized as his generation got older, much of this information would be lost. Though he started, and got several of the other older men in the area enthused by the project, before he could get it going, Dale got sick.

In 1998 he had to give up his job as fire warden. When the Forest Service men came to take the sign down, Violet said she asked if she could keep it, it had been part of her life for so long. She has it still.

Dale Harrell passed away in the fall of 2001. The Hoosier National Forest is certainly a better place for the many years Dale and Violet Harrell served as fire wardens.

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