Montana's Worst Fire Season Ever...?

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Hello Everyone!

Okay, so I took a week off to go halibut fishing in Alaska. We had a great time and stocked up on some very tasty filets!

I’m back to work.

A recent rash of wildfires in Montana prompted me to look back into the history of forest fires in our region.

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This is the time of year when the Dog Days of Summer roll into Fair Time. A melancholy time for me as a kid—Fair Time meant summer was coming to an end.

Back-to-school shopping… Uuuuggghhhh!!!! Haircuts, colored pencils, Pee-Chees, Levis and U.S. Keds.

A last hurrah over Labor Day weekend—and then SCHOOL!!!! Hot classrooms, buses, schedules, assignments and homework.

The anticipation of new teachers and classmates. Who was going to be the new school bully…? And the inescapable “What-I-Did-Last-Summer” essay.

I remember the smell of the stuff our janitors used to clean the classrooms and halls. The feelings never go away.

Oh well….

Charley Pike

For north Idaho and western Montana 1910 was the driest year in anyone's memory. Mountain snows melted early and spring rains never came. Pacific storm fronts that normally crossed the Palouse and over the Rockies failed to form.

By early July rivers meandered though mud and streams simply disappeared into bedrock. Hot dry winds blew day after day. Way too early in the year forests were rendered tinder dry.

The Stage Was Set

The first forest fire of the 1910 season broke out on the Blackfeet National Forest in northwestern Montana on April 29. The month of May 1910 broke heat and drought records.

By late June the woods were on fire in a hundred different places.

Loggers, homesteaders and campers accidentally started some blazes. Others were the work transient firefighters looking for employment. Railroad locomotives contributed—spewing hot cinders through the dense forests.

A bad electrical storm the night of July 15 touched off scores of fires in north Idaho. The same thing happened the night of July 26 in Montana’s Bitterroots.

But locating forest fires and getting to them was nigh on to impossible in 1910.

Plus, the U.S. Forest Service as an agency was only five years old and had only just begun developing forest fire response policies.

On August 10 reports began coming into the Forest Service’s district headquarters in Missoula that more fires had broken out and were quickly spreading on the surrounding Clearwater, Bitterroot, Lolo, Cabinet, Flathead, Kootenai, Nez Perce, and Blackfeet National Forests.

There were 1,736 fires burning in north Idaho and western Montana by mid August, 1910.

The Forest Service asked President William Howard Taft to deploy 4,000 troops to help the civilian firefighters. The firefighters soon appeared to have the upper hand.

Forest supervisors even began releasing crews on August 19.

But it was short-lived optimism.

A Red Demon from Hell

Early on the morning of August 20 a westerly breeze picked up and sifted through the Coeur d’Alene National Forest and over Idaho’s St. Joe Mountains. By afternoon a cold front blew into the main stem of the Northern Rockies fueling Katabatic winds that dropped down the passes.

These winds accelerated into a hurricane that roared over the forests. In a matter of hours the hundreds of isolated fires consolidated into massive firestorms.

Kalispell forester Edward G. Stahl witnessed flames hundreds of feet high. "Fanned by a tornadic wind so violent that the flames flattened out ahead,” he later wrote. “Swooping to earth in great darting curves, truly a veritable red demon from hell."

It seemed like there was one huge inferno. Actually there were six main conflagrations—with the Great Burn west of Missoula being the largest.

The settlements of Avery, Grand Forks, Kyle and Falcon in Idaho; and Taft, DeBorgia, Henderson and Haugan in Montana were wholly or partially consumed. The town of Wallace, Idaho was nearly wiped out.

Through it all 86 people died, 78 of whom were firefighters.

Over the course of two days nearly 3 million acres of virgin forest had fallen to the fires—destroying enough timber to build 800,000 houses. Ash fell as far east as New York. Smoke reached Greenland.

As quickly as they came, the winds stopped and temperatures dropped. On the night of the 23rd, the cold front turned to a general light rain. Snow fell in the higher elevations.

But the Great Burn of 1910 had already burned its way into the American conscience.

It wasn’t legendary, it was real, palpable and measurable. The Great Burn of 1910 left many legacies—on the landscape and in human form.

In the aftermath of the 1910 fires, a double-edged sword arose from the ashes. The U.S. Forest Service gained the stature it needed to elevate its place in our nation’s embryonic conservation culture.

Yet the rigorous policy of fire suppression that accompanied this turning point set up decades focused on extinguishing every wildfire at all costs.

In its own way, the new fire suppression policy was effective.

For many years fires like those that simmered prior to the Big Blowup were quashed. But over time, the exclusion of fire from forested landscapes resulted in accumulating fuels.

Denser, less diverse forests have created a recipe for catastrophic blazes once more.

Add in environmental policy that for 50 years has limited or in some areas nearly halted timber harvest. Forest and wildlife management favored forest preservation.

Multiple-use doctrines have steadily given way to massive reaches of untouchable wilderness that become even more dense every day.

The longstanding policy allowing natural fires to burn out on their own was showcased in Yellowstone Park in 1988. The “Let it Burn” policy was blamed for widespread forest destruction—and the conundrum of wildfire management continues.

With Smokey Bear still one of America’s most recognizable advertising icons, our relationship with wildfire remains tense and dynamic.

In the early 1990s, Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas declared that some fires should be fought, but others allowed to burn.

“Fire is neither good nor bad,” Thomas said. “It just is.”

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