New York Times writer Timothy Egan has written a book critical to anyone interested in wildland fire and the history of public land management. The Big Burn is an ambitious book that examines the 1910 fires that burned 3 million acres of Idaho and Montana and killed 100 people, mostly firefighters.
His book goes well beyond an examination of the complex of fires and their behavior and affects on towns like Wallace Idaho. He brings it all into a much larger historical perspective looking at the birth of the national forests under Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot and then follows the development of the Forest Service in its first 30 years primarily by looking at the career of Gifford Pinchot.
Egan notes that the 1910 fires were critical to the survival of Teddy Roosevelt’s national forests which were under attack from industrialists who wanted to cut them down and mine them without restrain and without accountability before Roosevelt set them aside as public lands.
Egan’s book is an excellent account of the early years of the Forest Service and how it very nearly didn’t survive its first decade until the 1910 fires were used by Gifford Pinchot to convince the nation of the importance of public management and conservation.
The book is well worth reading. My book on the Cerro Grande Fire will be out soon. See details at www.tomribe.com.
