By August 1910, the Pacific Northwest had been burning for months. A severe drought had left the forests tinder-dry, and over 1,700 fires had scorched their way across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

On the night of August 20, high winds roared through the region, and the forests exploded. The “Big Blow Up” or the “Big Burn,” as it came to be known, burned so quickly that many firefighters and residents were taken unawares. The flames leapt over canyons and rivers, and “everywhere people heard the roar, like a thousand trains crossing a thousand steel trestles.” The howling wind leveled trees by the thousands. One Forest Service official exclaimed: “The high winds . . . are raising the very devil.”

Using the technological novelty of the telephone, operators relayed calls for evacuations. Trains carried distraught residents away from the endangered towns, railway trestles burning underneath them. Despite best efforts, the towns of Wallace, De Borgia, Taft and others settlements suffered heavy damage.

Mrs. R. J. Wiley and her family fled in front of the flames, evacuated by railroad to Missoula. She reported: “The little town of Haugan is wiped off the face of the earth.”

All 50 residents of Haugan survived. Some men saved themselves by lying for hours in the St. Regis River. They emerged to find the little railroad town gone, burned to ashes in less than three hours. “Everywhere there has been fire,” one survivor remembered, “Eyes are red and weeping, hands are blistered and clothing is burned full of holes.”

By the time the smoke cleared, the Big Burn had scorched nearly 3 million acres. Most devastating of all, though, it cost the lives of as many as 85 people, 78 of whom were firefighters. Six individuals died in Mineral County. In response, the fledgling Forest Service (just five years old) redoubled its efforts to prevent and suppress fires—a policy that shaped forest management for much of the twentieth century.

Credits and Sources:

Cohen, Stan, and Donald C. Miller. The Big Burn: The Northwest’s Forest Fire of 1910.Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 2001.

“Conditions Are Bad In Forests.” The Daily Missoulian, August 12, 1910.

Davis-Quitt, Deb. Big Blowup: The 1910 Fire in Mineral County. Publisher unknown, date unknown.

Mineral County Historical Society. Mineral County History.Superior, MT: Mineral County Historical Society, 2004.

Pyne, Stephen J. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire.Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982.

“Refugees Slumber in Peace.” The Daily Missoulian, August 23, 1910.

“Splendid Battle is Waged Against Flames at Saltese.” The Daily Missoulian, August 23, 1910.

“Tales of the Fire.” The Daily Missoulian, August 25, 1910.

Wiley, Mrs. R. J.. “An Experience.” The Daily Missoulian, August 30, 1910.

Historic photographs of “Fire Aftermath,” “Tree Regrowth After Fire,” and “Survivors of Fire at De Borgia” of Mineral County Historical Museum, Superior, MT.

Historic photographs of “De Borgia, Montana, before the Fire of 1910,” Photo Number 76.0230, and “De Borgia, Montana, after the great fire of 1910, ” Photo Number 76.0230, courtesy of the Bill Pike Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, University of Montana, Missoula.

Contemporary photographs of the memorial grove at Savenac courtesy of Historical Research Associates, Inc.