Not a tower per se, but a lookout, "a permanent fixed site," as well as its occupant, according to the second source that Ridgewalker cites above. Speckled first had a lookout cabin, then tower. Moosilauke was part of the lookout system early on.
"Fire lookouts, permanent fixed sites from which to spot forest fires, originated in the west before 1900. The first lookout in the east was reportedly on Squaw Mt. in Maine in 1905. (Note: personal conversation with Iris W. Baird, February 8, 2001 - there is evidence that not only was Croydon station the first New Hampshire tower but it may have been the first in the East as early as 1903.)
In the fall of 1909 the state found itself with $599.39 of unexpended fire fighting funds, and got permission to purchase telephones, wire and fixtures for five lookout stations. There were already two lookouts on private land: Croydon Peak in the Draper Company-Blue Mountain Park, and Mt. Rosebrook, operated by the Mt. Pleasant Hotel in Crawford Notch.
The AMC, which had title to the summit of Kearsarge North (Pequawket) let a lookout use the ruined hotel on that summit and run a phone line to the valley. With this cooperation from the private sector, New Hampshire entered the lookout business.
New Hampshire State Forester Edgar C. Hirst next called a meeting in Gorham in March 1910 at which he explained to the major timberland owners what Maine, New York and Vermont were doing and asked for support. The timbermen contributed $4100 on the spot and organized themselves into the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association (NHTOA). This group later assessed themselves a penny per acre per year for fire detection, on a total acreage of about a million acres.
In the summer of 1910, ten additional lookouts went into service. Of these, three -- Mt. Agassiz, Mt. Madison and Mt. Moosilauke -- already had some sort of summit occupancy with telephones, with whom contacts could be made. Aziscoos, in Maine, was operated by the Maine Forest Service, with which New Hampshire entered into a cooperative agreement. There was a hotel on Moosilauke, and the AMC caretaker at Madison Hut had a phone connected to Ravine House in Randolf. The NHTOA supplied funds for seven additional stations: Magalloway, Sugarloaf, Signal, Cambridge Black, Pine, Carrigain and Osceola."
The Moosilauke watchman was credited with having spotted five forest fires in the early years of the lookout system. His salary was paid directly or indirectly by the NHTOA funds. This is a whole apect of White Mountain history that's new to me but it all makes sense. The logging practices of the time (high piles of tinder dry slash) and sparks from the logging trains set off so many devastating fires, many of which, ironically cleared the mountain views we enjoy today (e.g., Baldface Circle), that timber owners naturally were alarmed and took action to protect their wood. How effectively they could fight a fire once they spotted it I don't know. Much of the impulse to "Save the Notch" in Franconia came from fear of the forest fires.
Smarts Mountain also has a long and complicated involvement in NH firetower
history that encapsulates major interrelated issues in forestry, hiking, conservation.