Further Reflections on Mann Gulch

As the Lewis and Clark expedition made its way through the beautiful, rugged area he would name “the gates of the rocky mountains,” Meriwether Lewis recorded in his journal on July 19, 1805: “this evening we entered much the most remarkable clifts that we have yet seen. these clifts rise from the waters edge on either side perpendicularly to the hight of 1200 feet.” The rain storm, complete with hail and lightning, that had struck earlier at 1 pm could explain his description of the area: “every object here wears a dark and gloomy aspect.” While it’s easy to read foreshadowing into that quote, the “dark and gloomy aspect” we today associate with the Gates of the Mountains was also caused by lightning.

The call came in on the morning of August 5, 1949, from a fire lookout 30 miles away. A lightning storm the day before had rolled through and started a fire. The lookout reported smoke coming from the Gates of the Mountains wilderness area. At 12:30, a spotter plane flew over Mann Gulch and confirmed the fire. With most of the local firefighters tied up with two other fires, smokejumpers from Missoula were dispatched. By 3:10, 16 men (15 smokejumpers and 1 fire watch guard who had hiked in to help) were on the ground gathering up equipment and preparing to fight the fire in what they expected to be a routine job. Less than 3 hours later, 11 men were dead and two were dying from severe burns. In many ways, the suffering was just beginning.

Had it been a routine job, I wouldn’t be writing about the Mann Gulch fire today: those 13 men killed wouldn’t have passed into Forest Service and smokejumper lore; few if any would have heard of writer Norman Maclean, whose meditation on the deaths of the young men trapped by the fire still moves people from around the world to visit Mann Gulch and see where “the four horsemen” and the others fell that day. The friends and families of the dead would not still be mourning.

More than 60 years after the fire, LG Walker, a retired doctor from Charlotte, North Carolina, was on the boat tour of the Gates of the Mountains. Where the tour boat docks in Meriwether Canyon now stands two memorials to the men of Mann Gulch. Here Walker learned that Silas Raymond Thompson Jr.—a Charlotte native—was among those killed. He had never met Thompson. After sharing this bit of news with his friend Dan Morrill back home, the two started investigating how a young man from Charlotte had met his death in Montana. They were intrigued by how all these years later, Raymond’s friends and family (nobody who knew him called him “Silas”) were still haunted by his death. His death devastated his parents and still affects his sister’s life. Walker and Morrill soon realized that a tragedy fire has many dimensions, and set about making a documentary film in order to better understand the impact and legacy of the life of Silas Raymond Thompson. While other documentary films on Mann Gulch focus on the event and its impact on the Forest Service, “Death at Mann Gulch” attempts to capture how it affected one man’s community.

Raymond Thompson markers in Mann Gulch, taken in 2010 (courtesy of the author)

Of course, Charlotte was not the only community affected by what happened in Mann Gulch. In a small town in central Pennsylvania, the family of smokejumper Leonard Piper has also done its part to preserve that young man’s memory. His personal papers were recently donated to the local historical society (photocopies of them are now here at FHS). Though Leonard was buried in nearby Stahlstown, descendents of the Piper family gather every year in Pine Ridge Park outside of Blairsville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up, “for a family reunion and to remember a fallen hero, Leonard Piper.” The impact of his death is such that his story and a mention of the family reunion has a 3-page spread in “The Insider’s Guide to Indiana County Parks & Trails,” where that quote comes from. Mind you, there’s no memorial marker in the park. But Leonard Piper’s death still resonates enough in this town to warrant such a gesture. And these are the two families I know about.

Leonard Piper’s marker. This photo also appears in the Indiana County parks and trails guide.

What is it about Mann Gulch that continues to hold or capture the attention of so many? Our “This Day in History” blog post on what happened in Mann Gulch is our most viewed post; my initial post from three years ago sharing my impressions after visiting Mann Gulch ranks third and is one of our most commented upon posts. Certainly Maclean’s Young Men and Fire is a major contributor to the continued interest. Tragedy has its own attractiveness; witness the continuing fascination with sinking of the Titanic 100 years later. Yet few tragedies hold our attention like that of Mann Gulch. It is understandable why it might for the families of those who died. But I suspect that after those who knew the men killed are gone, the Mann Gulch Fire will continue to cast a spell. For me, the pull is personal: I’ve visited the site twice; I participated in the making of the film “Death at Mann Gulch” and contributed the photo of Piper’s marker above to the county’s guide; and I interviewed William “Bud” Moore, who was with crew chief Wag Dodge when he died and was consulted by Maclean when he was writing his beautiful elegiacal work. I could speculate about why it holds the attention of others, but I want to hear your thoughts on this. Why are you interested in Mann Gulch? Do you know of other families that continue to honor their loved ones like Leonard Piper’s does? If so, how do they do it?

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October 8, 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin, is Consumed by Fire

On this date in 1871, the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and several smaller surrounding communities were obliterated by fire. The “booming town of 1700 people was wiped out of existence in the greatest fire disaster in American history,” according to the memorial marker that still stands in Peshtigo as silent sentinel watching over the graves of more than 1,100 of the fire’s victims. The fire, which destroyed more than $5 million in property and 2,400 square miles, was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which occurred the same day and annihilated that city’s core. News of the Peshtigo fire didn’t even reach the state capital for two days. And when it did, Wisconsin’s governor was in Chicago with other state leaders trying to aid that stricken city and had to hurry home to help his own constituents.

Though still little known by the general public today, Peshtigo looms large in forest history and fire history circles. For example, several articles in the Fall 2008 issue of Forest History Today reference Peshtigo as an example of fire in the wildland-urban interface, and one looks at it in the context of wildfire and civil defense.

To mark the 140th anniversary, we have just finished processing a related archival collection, the Peshtigo Fire Centennial Collection, 1970-1990. In 1970, the town held a commemoration event marking the centennial of the fire. The new collection features event programs, commemorative items, publications, letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other materials. A few things that caught our eyes were the commemorative stickers and the postage cancellation mark, which you can see on the finding aid page, and a bumper sticker and wooden coins. All materials were kindly donated by Karl W. Baumann.

Peshtigo Centennial bumper sticker (click to enlarge)

Peshtigo Fire commemorative wooden coins

Artist's rendering of Peshtigo Fire approaching a Wisconsin farm (FHS2525).

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Take a virtual hike to the Pulaski Tunnel

This weekend marks the 101st anniversary of the “Big Blowup,” when 3 million acres of forestland went up in flames during the 1910 fires. In July of this year, I finally made the hike to Pulaski Tunnel outside of Wallace, Idaho, something I’d wanted to do for some time. The tunnel is where Ed Pulaski forced his fire crew at gunpoint and ordered them into the small tunnel as the inferno raged around them (you can read his firsthand account in this article). Because Wallace is not easy to get to, I thought I’d offer a virtual hike.

The trail was built by the Pulaski Project. The project was a substantial undertaking; researchers and archeologists had to first determine where the tunnel was; then came construction of the trail and installation of the signs in rugged country. Many thanks go to all of those who worked on the Pulaski Project.

The trailhead is just south of Wallace and the trail is a two-mile, mostly uphill, hike. Along the way you’ll find interpretive signs describing the Big Blowup and its aftermath, and about “Big Ed” and his life. (All photos are copyright James G. Lewis.)

The first few hundred yards are paved but then it's compacted dirt the rest of the way. It's a beautiful if slightly challenging hike because of the elevation change.

This the first sign along the trail. The trailhead is marked by posts with Pulaski tools on them.

To read the text on any of the signs, please click on the photo.

The trail runs along and above Placer Creek.

You've only started. There's lots more to see after the jump.

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Have a Wildfire? Call a Historian

In her article, “Fire Alarm: Historians, and Thorstein Veblen, to the Rescue,” Patricia Limerick asked why is it that, when a wildfire breaks out, no one calls a historian? After all, she writes, “what is needed are the ‘skills, talents, and approaches’ of historians and the long perspective that history offers.” Here at PBB HQ, we’re not waiting for the phone to ring. Instead, we’re responding to the news of a new fire having started Sunday in near Los Alamos, New Mexico, and threatening the nuclear lab there with some historical perspective. Sure, we could have responded a few weeks ago when we learned that Arizona is going “up in flames.” But since we’re going to Albuquerque in August to give a presentation on the American Tree Farm System, the Los Alamos fire kind of caught our attention.

The FHS research staff is standing by to answer your fire history questions. (R9_418647)

So we thought it might be helpful to point others interested in the history of fire in the Southwest to our online resources and thus bring historical context to the fires there. (For the latest on any fire currently burning, visit the U.S. Forest Service’s “Active Fire Map” website and click on a link to learn the status of an active fire.)

• “Fire!” is the aptly named chapter in Men Who Matched the Mountains: The Forest Service in the Southwest, the 1972 history of the region by the USDA Forest Service.
• Brief descriptions of individual national forests in Arizona and New Mexico may be found in the same book.
• The history of the region was examined again in 1988′s Timeless Heritage: A History of the Forest Service in the Southwest. This time, the authors were a little more subtle with the chapter title: “The Forests and Fire.” This history was also published by the USDA Forest Service.
• “Fire Warriors: American Indian Firefighters in the Southwest,” by David H. DeJong, appeared in the 2004 issue of Forest History Today.
• For a look at what firefighters and policymakers are dealing with in a broader context, read “The Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Problem: A Consequence of the Fire Exclusion Paradigm,” by Jack Cohen, in Forest History Today.
• “Spark and Sprawl: A World Tour,” by Stephen J. Pyne, from the same issue of Forest History Today does the same on a global scale.
• Oh, heck, just read the whole issue on fire and impress your friends with your knowledge of fire in the wildland-urban interface!
• If want to understand the history of fire policy in America and you prefer reading the old-fashioned way, i.e., on paper, you may want to order America’s Fires: A Historical Context for Policy and Practice, also by Stephen J. Pyne.
• Like me, do you sometimes find yourself asking, WDGT (What Does Gifford Think)? If so, read Mr. Pinchot’s take on forest fires from 1899 in “The Relationship of Forests and Forest Fires.”
• Sometimes it’s helpful to go to the original sources to better understand how and why land managers are facing such large fires today. In 1920, then Forest Service chief William Greeley put forward the agency’s argument against allowing light burning, something that today is widely recognized as one of many tools needed for land restoration, in “‘Piute Forestry’ or the Fallacy of Light Burning.”
• If you really want to get into the early history of the region, The Early Days: A Sourcebook of Southwestern Region History, a 3-volume collection of oral histories of old Forest Service employees of the Southwest, is a great resource.

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Forgotten Characters from Forest History: “The Guberif”

Everyone knows Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and maybe even Ranger Rick Raccoon, but there are many other forest and forestry-related fictional characters that long ago fell by the wayside. Peeling Back the Bark‘s series on “Forgotten Characters from Forest History” continues here with Part 2 in which we examine the Guberif.

“What the hell is a Guberif?”

Residents of Idaho began asking that question in 1950 when the Guberif first invaded their state’s forests. Rarely seen today, the Guberif is a creature that stalks the woods, leaving behind devastating forest fires in its wake. Commonly found throughout Idaho during the 1950s, the creature was mostly eradicated through a successful statewide “wanted dead or alive” hunting campaign. A sworn enemy of the forest, the infamous Guberif nonetheless developed a cult following, and still stands as one of the most unique characters in state history.

To fully understand the Guberif, we first need to go back to 1946, the year the Keep Idaho Green campaign was launched. The campaign was an extension of the Keep Green program that began in the state of Washington in 1940 to combat the growing number of catastrophic fires in the Pacific Northwest. The program quickly spread nationwide and other states began implementing their own forest fire prevention advertising campaigns under the Keep Green banner. By 1946 twelve states, including Idaho, had created their own official Keep Green organizations.

The driving force behind the creation of Keep Idaho Green was the Idaho State Junior Chamber of Commerce. Most of the Keep Idaho Green organization’s early executive committee members (composed of representatives from State, federal, and private interests) came from the Junior Chamber. Like other states with Keep Green programs, the Idaho organization designed and distributed educational materials such as posters, stickers, pamphlets, and displays boards, as well as short films and radio spots featuring messages of fire prevention.

Looking for a way to help differentiate their forest fire prevention campaign from that of other states, Keep Idaho Green invented a new character. First introduced in 1950, the “Guberif” was defined as a creature that starts fires in Idaho’s forests through acts of carelessness. The development of the character is credited to Richard A. Trzuskowski, who was publicity director for the Keep Idaho Green committee at the time.

One of the many Guberif postcards distributed by Keep Idaho Green, 1951.

Designed as an ugly winged insect, normally seen smoking a cigarette or pipe and sporting a clueless expression, the new Guberif character was plastered on posters and other items by the Keep Idaho Green organization during the next few years. In 1951 alone, more than 100,000 postcards featuring the Guberif were distributed in Idaho. In addition, 300 road surface signs bearing messages of fire prevention – and mentioning the Guberif – were painted on Idaho highways (some of which can still be found today in various parts of the state). A short film was even produced featuring the Guberif in a starring role.

Clarence Grone, director of the Rutledge Unit of Potlatch Forests at Coeur D’Alene, points out one of the new Keep Idaho Green road surface signs, 1952.

Derived from a relatively simple concept – the word “firebug” spelled backward – the character produced immediate reactions.

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Fire Prevention Week: October 3-9, 2010

This week (October 3-9, 2010) marks Fire Prevention Week, a designation intended to promote the importance of fire safety and awareness as well as to pay tribute to the nation’s firefighters. Dating back almost a full century, the observance began in October 1911 when eight states issued proclamations formally setting aside October 9th as “Fire Prevention Day.” Organized in part by the National Fire Marshals Association, the day was chosen to commemorate the 40th anniversaries of the Great Chicago Fire and Wisconsin’s Peshtigo Fire, which both began on October 8, 1871, and burned into the next day. Officials hoped to “bring home to the people the great calamities that might happen from such terrible disasters.” (Other fires in different parts of Michigan and Illinois on October 9, 1911, also destroyed towns and claimed lives. All told, more than 1.5 million acres burned in two days and claimed thousands of lives in the Midwest. By coincidence, the same week of the first Fire Prevention Day the commission investigating the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, which killed 146 factory workers who were trapped in a burning building, was holding its hearings. This March 1911 fire made clear the danger of fire in modern urbanized areas and led to the establishment of building fire codes and other reforms.)

Nine years after this first observance, the day became an official national designation when President Woodrow Wilson issued a 1920 proclamation officially naming October 9 as National Fire Prevention Day. By this time the day’s events were already growing into a week-long observance in various states and locales around the country. The mayors of New York City and Chicago both promoted a week of activities and events relating to fire prevention in 1919. Nationwide the day coincided with educational activities in public schools, public lectures, the cleaning of debris and fire hazards from homes and property, fire drills, the distribution of fact sheets about fire damage, slides in movie theaters showing images of the loss of life and property, and fire prevention displays and placards in stores. Rules for preventing fires were even printed on restaurant menus.

In 1925 President Calvin Coolidge issued the first national proclamation for Fire Prevention Week, designating it as the seven days from Sunday to Saturday encompassing October 9th. Every president since has followed suit, with President Obama issuing the latest proclamation on October 1st, 2010. Currently the week is promoted by the National Fire Protection Association, the world’s leading advocate for fire prevention. This year’s version of Fire Prevention Week also marks the return of public service announcements featuring Bambi alongside Smokey Bear. This is a throwback of sorts to the first U.S. Forest Service fire PSAs of 1944 which featured Disney’s Bambi character prior to the debut of Smokey.

In honor of this year’s Fire Prevention Week, we bring you a few images of historic fire prevention efforts from the FHS Photograph Collection. Click on any of the below images to enlarge:

Young girl admires the U.S. Forest Service fire prevention exhibit at the 1963 North Carolina State Fair.

A Florida Forest Service fire prevention float, featuring Miss Fire Control and her friends Miss Turpentine, Miss Pulpwood, and Miss Lumber.

Mississippi storekeeper Ed Bailey hands out a fire prevention promotional item to his customer.

National Parks fire prevention poster.

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The “Big Blowup” centennial anniversary is this weekend

Coming only five years after the U.S. Forest Service’s establishment, the devastating series of forest fires that swept over Montana, Idaho, and Washington on August 20–22 in what is known as the “Big Blowup” struck at a critical and pivotal time in the history of the young agency. Ever since the dismissal of Chief Gifford Pinchot in January 1910, his successor Henry Graves had been fighting in the halls of Congress to save the Forest Service from its political enemies. That summer, in the rugged landscape of the Northern Rockies, Forest Service rangers battled to save national forest lands from thousands of fires. The Big Blowup killed around 87 people and wiped a handful of towns off the map. The catastrophe made headlines around the world and gave the agency its first hero, Ed Pulaski.

In addition to the fires seen on this map, the Forest Service was dealing with fires throughout the western U.S. when the Big Blowup occurred.

The fire incinerated 3 million acres of prime timberland in less than 48 hours. It was no small irony that a fire that very nearly annihilated the agency charged with protecting that land would instead actually save the agency. Before the fires were even out, the Forest Service moved quickly to assess the damage to the forests while at the same time salvaging its reputation. The agency and its supporters argued that the fires could have been contained and catastrophe prevented if the Forest Service had had enough men and money, and attacked their political enemies for not giving them sufficient resources to do their job. This became the agency’s mantra for the next half-century when discussing fire suppression—give us more men and money and we can conquer the enemy fire. After the Big Blowup, the agency immediately sought a cooperative approach with state and private associations to fight fire through the Weeks Act (passed in 1911) and soon launched a fire protection campaign that targeted eliminating fire from the landscape and changing how Americans viewed fire. More horrific fire seasons, especially that of 1933, led to the 10 AM policy and then the Smokey Bear campaign. The policy decision to go after fire no matter what—made even as the embers of the Big Blowup continued to smolder—continues to haunt us a century later.

You can learn all about the Big Blowup (sometimes called “The Big Burn”) and its legacy at our webpage dedicated to the 1910 Fires. You’ll find a more complete account of the fires and lots of documents relating to the incident—many written by those who fought the fires—and can learn more about the legendary Ed Pulaski too. Those wanting to understand the incident in a broader historical context will want to read Stephen Pyne’s new work, America’s Fires, published this year by the Forest History Society.

If you are in the Northern Rockies this coming weekend, you may want to take in one of the many activities going on there to mark the centennial of the Big Blowup. Missoula’s minor league baseball team will be giving away Ed Pulaski bobblehead dolls on Friday. At the Historical Ft. Missoula Museum, re-enactors from the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum will present a program on Sunday and George Sibley will screen a documentary about the fires on Monday. Wallace, ID, will host a slate of speakers including Dr. Pyne and Rocky Barker over the weekend and also a hike to the Pulaski tunnel. Below are images of the tunnel just days after the fire and this past May. The Forest Service was preparing to install “downed timber” at the restored site when our boss Steve Anderson visited the historic site then.

Mouth of tunnel where Ranger Edward Pulaski sheltered his men, photo taken September 1910

Mouth of the Pulaski tunnel, as seen in May 2010

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Newly revised edition of “America’s Fires” now available

My Google news home page has a “Forest Service” section, which captures any article that has that phrase in it. Usually the article is about the U.S. Forest Service but it will also grab items about state or other national forest services too. Consequently, nearly every day there is a news item about fire somewhere in the world. Sometimes it’s about a wildfire currently burning or the aftermath of one; other times it’s about the progress of a prescribed burn or a notification that one is about to be getting underway. It makes fire seem ever-present.

With all that news about fire, one might ask if America has a fire problem. In his new book, America’s Fires: A Historical Context for Policy and Practice, Stephen Pyne says that America doesn’t have a fire problem — it has many fire problems. How this came to pass is examined in this newly revised and updated version of his classic work on the subject.

The policy of fire exclusion through most of the 20th century seemed successful at first but eventually led to larger, more intense, and damaging fires. By the mid-1970s, federal agencies had pulled back from the fire suppression model and embraced a mix of fire practices, including forms of prescribed burning and let-burn policies. The 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park placed fire issues (also discussed in a recent issue of Forest History Today) before the public in unprecedented ways, advertising the ecological significance of free-burning fire and the dilemmas of trying to manage it. Further complicating the fire scene is an increasing population, a growing wildland-urban interface, drought, invasive species, global climate change, and an incomplete institutional arrangement for managing the variety of fires that exist.

In this latest Issues Series book, Steve Pyne — the world’s foremost fire historian — reviews the historical context of American fire issues and policies that can inform the current and future debate. The resulting analysis shows why it is imperative that the nation review its policies toward wildland fires and finds ways to live with them more intelligently. Want to know more? Buy the book — don’t wait for the movie!

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“Big Blowup” webpage marks centennial of 1910 Fires

On August 20-21, 1910, fires driven by gale-force winds consumed 3 million acres, several towns, and at least 85 lives in the Montana, Idaho, and Washington.  Known as “The Big Blowup,” no other event in U.S. Forest Service history has had a greater impact on the agency.  Heroes were made, legends were born, and the agency was changed forever.

The Forest History Society is marking the centennial of the 1910 fires with a website dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of that seminal event.  Many documents being made available are hard-to-find articles written by the men who lived through the fire and were deeply affected by it.  Men like Ed Pulaski, Bill Greeley, “Gus” Silcox, Elers Koch, and E.T. Allen, to name a few.

A sampling of images from the FHS collection relating to the Big Blowup. Images include newspaper clippings, photos of the fire-ravaged land, and of Ed Pulaski.

Drawing from the extensive holdings of the Forest History Society, our crack staff has created a new section of our U.S. Forest Service History webpages about the history and legacy of the 1910 Fires.  (You’ll also find a revised version of the Mann Gulch page, which we’ve blogged about here and here, under the Famous Fires section.)  On the Big Blowup page you will find an overview essay of the event and numerous items such as:

• a firsthand account of the ordeal by Ed Pulaski and others
• historical documents, photographs, and maps
• PDFs of books and essays that place the event in historical context
• reflections on the fire’s impact on land management and fire policy
• an original essay by fire historian Stephen Pyne, author of Year of the Fires
• a bibliography of books and articles about the Big Blowup

You can find all of our outstanding resources on the Big Blowup at: www.foresthistory.org/1910fires.htm.

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August 5, 1949: Mann Gulch Tragedy

On this date 60 years ago, the Mann Gulch fire in Montana’s Helena National Forest was first spotted.  This devastating wildfire would eventually claim the lives of 12 U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers and one fire guard, as well as burn close to 5,000 acres of timber and grasslands.  The tragic events surrounding this fire ensure that August 5, 1949, will forever be remembered within U.S. Forest Service and wildland firefighting history.

Hot weather and lightning storms the previous evening put Forest Service rangers in the area on notice that day, and around noon, the Mann Gulch fire was first officially reported.  Shortly thereafter, a plane carrying 15 smokejumpers was dispatched to the fire from Missoula, Montana.

At the time of Mann Gulch, smokejumping was a relatively new practice.  The Forest Service’s Aerial Fire Control Experimental Project had moved to the North Pacific Region (Region 6) in 1939 and switched its focus from aerial water drops to experiments with parachute jumping.  The first operational use of smokejumpers by the Forest Service occurred in 1940, but prior to Mann Gulch, no smokejumper had ever died fighting a wildfire.

Forest Service smokejumpers dropped over Sherman Gulch, Lolo National Forest, Montana, June 17, 1954.

After landing on the ground a half-mile from the fire, the 15 smokejumpers were met by James O. Harrison, a fire guard from the nearby Meriwether Canyon Campground, and the group headed down the gulch towards the nearby Missouri River to stake a safer position.  The dry conditions and high winds, along with a change in wind direction, caused the fire to suddenly expand.   The men’s route was cut off, forcing them back uphill while trying to outrun the swiftly advancing fire.   It was later estimated that during this blow-up stage, the fire covered 3,000 acres in 10 minutes.

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