VIRGINIA LOOKOUTS
October 21, 1921: "Scene--North Mt. Lookout Station 'Hello, Hello, is this Forest Ranger Foltz?'
Forest Ranger Foltz: 'Yes, what have you to report?'
North Mt. Lookout Station: 'Smoke rising on the Orkney Springs tract near National Forest Boundary.'
Ranger Foltz: 'I'm off. Watch the smoke and if it grows call more men at sundown. If it does not you will know that I can handle it with the crew I pick up on the way.'
This was the brief conversation which started the trouble. Ranger Foltz of the Potomac Ranger District of the Shenandoah National Forest, mounted his horse and galloped away at 2 p.m. and by 6 p.m. had the first fire under control, but he had noticed that during the hottest part of the fight the fire had shown almost human intelligence in crossing over the fire line and that set him to wondering and then to investigating and he found that one Boyd Fansler, who had come in supposedly to assist in extinguishing the fire, had been facetiously setting the fire across the fire line which had been established by the other men, making the construction of new lines essential.
Finally he was discovered in the act of drinking and under the influence of some of Shenandoah County's 'best.' He was made to fully realize the error of his ways however, when he was taken before Magistrate J.R.T. Stidley of Orkney Springs who informed him that setting fire on the wrong side of a fire line was not a practical joke but a misdemeanor by the most liberal interpretation of the law, punishable by a fine and suggested that a fine of $40 and costs, would be sufficient since this was the first offense." (Daily News-Record)