On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men — college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps — to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot’s rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected — or not — today.
The Station fire that got so much attention this summer took two weeks to burn about 200,000 acres. The "Big Burn" in 1910 wiped out 3 million acres in two days - about 100 times more intense.
If only Timothy Egan's retelling matched the event.
The 1910 fire wasn't especially deadly. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in Manhattan less than six months later killed more people. But both had lasting political effects.
The factory fire gave a boost to the union movement. The Big Burn, according to Egan, saved the Forest Service and, in a more profound sense, ratified a new view by Americans of their national endowment.
The first half of "The Big Burn" is slow going. It tells how Teddy Roosevelt, an accidental president if there ever was one, imposed, briefly, his notions of conservation on a Republican Party that before and since has been devoted to looting the public lands.
Egan's retelling is impressionistic rather than precise, with saints (John Muir, the publicist), sinners (Senator Weldon Heyburn, the lumber operator) and prophets in the wilderness (Gifford Pinchot, first head of the Forest Service). Interesting personalities all, but they are more caricatures than real people in Egan's retelling, especially the villains.
The story demands to be set in a national frame - there was a lot more to Teddy's Progressivism than trees - but Egan fails to do that. He does not, for example, mention the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
His history of the fire itself is more satisfying although, again, Egan sets it in a small frame.
The fire raged through the Bitterroots of Idaho, but it also devastated other states and part of Canada. Egan limits himself to one valley - which he fails to describe thoroughly - and a handful of personalities.
Again, we have a saint (Ed Pulaski, whose name is attached to the firefighters' tool), a sinner (Ralph Debitt, a cowardly ranger) and a prophet (Bill Weigle, a Forest Service supervisor). These characters are more sympathetic to Egan and seem more real, less stand-ins for political movements.
There are plenty of other arresting players, too: a regiment of black cavalrymen, a pair of immigrants from Italy, a football star turned ranger. As far as it goes, this is a good story. Egan just doesn't carry it far enough.
"The Big Burn" is worth reading anyway, although the reader will have to supply some of his own facts to flesh it out - like the ascendancy of James Watt under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, contradicting Egan's blithe romance about how the fire taught America to reverence its natural inheritance.
The treatment by the government of the men who served it was shameful and is worth knowing about. Egan does treat this aspect of the story adequately.
In fact, there is a lot more about the Big Burn worth knowing than Egan puts into this interesting but superficial history.
In "The Big Burn", author Timothy Egan skillfully weaves the story of a massive August 1910 forest fire in Idaho and Montana into the histories of the U.S. Forest Service and the conservation movement. The book begins with its two leading characters, Theodore Roosevelt and his close friend, forester Gifford Pinchot. The reader who is unfamiliar with either of these two will receive a superficial biography which enables him or her to understand their roles in the forestry and conservation contribution to the Progressive Era. TR was the outdoorsman who strove to preserve natural resources and wilderness areas for future generations. Pinchot was the wealthy heir who invented the forestry profession and made it the cause of his life. It was Pinchot who taught TR how to protect virgin timber from the lumber industry. This book illustrates the forces and personalities which contended over the issues concerning the preservation or utilization of America's timber resources. Among those opposing TR and Pinchot were President William Howard Taft and timber interest defenders, Montana Senator William Clark and Idaho Senator Weldon Heyburn. The conservationists' disputes were not all fought against industrialists. Pinchot, who favored wise use of the forests, would even clash with his mentor, John Muir, who preferred uncompromising preservation.
After laying out the tale of the conservation efforts, Egan switches to stories of the settlers and Forest Rangers who fought against and live through or died in the Big Burn. These are stories of heroism and tragedy, survival and death.
The title says that this is about "Teddy Roosevelt & The Fire That Saved America." As I was reading about the fire, I wondered how he was going to tie this back into the saving of America. Egan brings the preservation of the Forest Service into the story by pointing out that the Big Burn made heroes of the Rangers, thereby increasing public support for funding and defeating the efforts of the industry and its political agents to destroy the Service which stood in the way of unfettered exploitation of the timber lands.
The writing is excellent. This narrative moves seamlessly from one story to another. You will always be longing for the next page.
Whether you are a devotee of the history of the Idaho-Montana region, Theodore Roosevelt, the Conservation Movement or the Progressive Era, this is a valuable addition to your library. Among my interests are Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era. Although I already knew much about those subjects before I began this book, I learned many new things and deepened my understanding. However familiar you are with these topics, you will learn much from this work.
As a child of the sixties I was brought up on the image of Smokey and Bear and the admonition, "Only YOU can prevent forest fires," placing responsibility for preservation of our national forests squarely on every American's shoulders. I learned while a Boy Scout to build fires properly, to control their burning, and to ensure that it was doused before leaving the campsite. I did not learn the history of forest fires in the American West and how they destroyed both property and natural resources. Timothy Egan's "The Big Burn" is a useful addition to that earlier knowledge, telling as it does some of this history in a graceful, conversational manner.
Egan narrates in this book the story of an August 1910 forest fire in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho and Montana. He recites how this fire, the largest forest fire in American history and perhaps in the history of the world, devastated 3 million acres of timberland and 13.5 million dollars in property. Fueled by a superdry year and powerful winds, it took out some 8 billion board feet of wood. Before it was over, the fire had killed 78 firefighters and 8 civilians. Some bodies could not be identified because of the intensity of the flames. This one moved faster and caused more damage than virtually another other forest fire. This was in no small part because on August 20, immense winds of hurricane force (more than 75 m.p.h.) fanned the flames.
By August 23, when rains finally came to help bring the fire under control, the extent of its destruction had only begun to be perceived. More than a third of Wallace, Idaho, had been incinerated, but other towns like Grand Forks, DeBorgia, Taft, and Haugen were completely wiped out. Sailors as far away as the Pacific Northwest reported seeing smoke from the fire. Dense smoke from the Idaho fire could also be seen as far southeast as Denver, Colorado.
It is hard to overstate the power of this forest fire. It is also hard to overstate the lessons its destruction seared into the psyches of those who experienced it. Something had to be done to curb this threat, and Egan spends considerable time talking about the response to it. National fire policy turned from then on as the Forest Service began suppressing fires with full-time, trained crews. They also developed a system of fire lookout posts and orchestrated media campaigns to prevent fires. Smokey the Bear was born out of these efforts to ensure that "everyone" worked to prevent forest fires.
"The Big Burn" is a well-written account of a turning point in the history of forestry in the United States. Like so many such turning points, unfortunately, the changes resulted from a deadly and devastating natural disaster.
