The Big Burn (39 page)

There was no mention of conservation on this August day in 2005. No mention of the Great Crusade, the fight to keep forests in public hands, of Roosevelt's cry to "leave it as it is," or Pinchot's progressive passion. What Pinchot fought for his entire adult life, facing ridicule and much resistance, what Pinchot tried to institutionalize with the Forest Service, was taken for granted.

This day was about a dead man named Pulaski, who wore a uniform, and the people who followed in his footsteps. From here on out, Placer Creek as it flowed from a thousand feet above the valley, right near the mine where Pulaski had taken refuge, would be one of the nation's sacred places — in the National Register of Historic Places.

The people who lived in the Coeur d'Alene country never forgot Pulaski. They spent years nagging the government. And now at last there was something—a descriptive trail along the stations of the cross where Pulaski fought to keep his men alive. A hiker could set out in the chill of the morning, well before the sun reached Placer Creek, starting where Pulaski and his wife said goodbye, and move upward in the narrow canyon, reading the signs along the way, trying to fathom that Saturday night in August 1910. Some evidence of the Big Burn remained. Here at the ceremony site was a big cedar stump, charred and black. And up the trail, visible among stands of thick pine and fir, were the last remnants of standing burned timbers, midnight-black skeletons. Beyond the mineshaft and up on the ridge, a hiker could roam in peace not far from where the Italians died in that horrible pit, flaming timbers crushing them.

The woods were quiet and largely left alone on this day, as they had been for some time. In the years after World War II, the national forests were industrialized, logged at a frenzied pace. What Pinchot the old man had seen in 1937 —green hillsides reduced to rubble, mud, and slash—had been repeated all over the West. But in the first decade of the new century, logging in all national forests was in steep decline, for reasons both economic and idealistic.

No change in government could alter that. Timber for homebuilding came from tree farms in Canada, because it was much cheaper to ship that wood to market than to yank it from an isolated place like the Bitterroots. Communities valued their public forests for recreation and the biological mix. Yew trees were a source for a cancer treatment. Even Wallace, with a population barely a third of what it was in 1910, reinvented itself as an outdoor destination — a base for skiers, bikers, and wilderness seekers. What Elers Koch and another forest ranger, the writer Aldo Leopold, had envisioned long ago had come to pass: by 2005, about thirty-five million acres of Forest Service land were designated as official wilderness areas, land set aside by law as places where "man himself is a visitor who does not remain," never to be logged, roaded, or sold off. One of those areas was in the High Lonesome where Koch and his wife spent so much of their time, just over the divide along the Lochsa and Clearwater rivers. Another, farther south, the River of No Return Wilderness, is the largest in the continental United States. The land itself, to the eye of a beholder, can tell a story of the 1910 fire, though the marks grow harder to see with every passing day.

When the Rockefellers and the Weyerhaeusers had pushed through these woods, it appeared that a new order was at hand. But it had not lasted. The trains are gone. Avery is a barely inhabited hamlet along a lonely road, and most of those inhabitants work for the Forest Service. It might as well be called Pinchot again. The railroad, the most costly of the transcontinental tracks, is no more, its steel lines pried from the ground and sold for scrap. That job of ten thousand workers had been dismantled, just as the ranger cabin had once been torn apart to make way for the Milwaukee Road. The tunnels remain, those big holes bored into the mountain where
trains took refuge during the fire. In the summer months, the tunnels and the ground leveled for the tracks of the Milwaukee Road are open to mountain bikers who want to experience the Bitterroots on two wheels, at their leisure.

There is nothing left of Grand Forks, not even a foundation footing from one of the saloons, nothing but grass and third-growth timber in the flat of a meadow, a little creek flowing past, bullfrogs in the shallows. Same with Taft, that roaring burg, burned to the ground, not a wisp left behind. Nature has reclaimed that ground. Up in the far reaches of the St. Joe River, where Joe Halm went for shelter from the firestorm, an angler with a few days of idle time can find some of the finest cutthroat water in the world. Up higher are bull trout in the cold, deep pools of the headwaters. There is no way to get into that country except by horse or human hoof. It has never been logged. The most remote pocket of the Coeur d'Alenes is just as Pulaski had experienced it on those Sunday picnics with Emma, just as Roosevelt envisioned it, just as Pinchot remembered seeing it for the first time, taking his breath away—there for fresh eyes, for people yet to be born, there to be discovered anew.

Notes on Sources

Acknowledgments

Index

Prologue

Details of how the fire started and how it spread, from Records of the Forest Service, Region One office, Missoula, Montana; Records of the Forest Service, National Archives, Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, Washington; and Records of the Forest Service, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

Carl Getz quoted on panics, from
Seattle Times,
August 26, 1910.

Fire Chief Kelly, "Let the bastards go," quoted in
Northwest Disaster: Avalanche and Fire,
by Ruby El Hult, Binfords & Mort, 1960.

Edward Pulaski, family reaction, and quotes, from "Memories of a Forest Service Wife," personal notes by Emma Pulaski, on file, Forest Service Region One headquarters, Missoula.

Additional Pulaski information, from Forest Service personnel files, Missoula, and from
Early Days of the Forest Service,
vols. 1—3, on file at the Forest Service Region One office, Missoula.

Greatest force yet assembled to fight a wildfire, from
Burning an Empire: The Study of American Forest Fires,
by Stewart Holbrook, Macmillan, 1945.

Theodore Roosevelt quoted on rich men, from
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography,
Macmillan, 1913.

Roosevelt quote on losing species, from his letter of February 2, 1889,
Theodore Roosevelt—Letters and Speeches,
Library of America, 1951.

The Forest Service staff and budget around Wallace, Idaho, and the Coeur d'Alene National Forest, from files at the Museum of North Idaho, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

William Howard Taft, his feelings on being president, from
William Howard Taft: An Intimate History,
by Judith Icke Anderson, W. W. Norton, 1981.

Deployment of the 25th Infantry, from National Archives, Seattle, the Museum of North Idaho, and various newspaper accounts.

How the fire spread, from Records of the Forest Service, National Archives, Seattle, and files at the Museum of North Idaho.

Details on how Wallace, Idaho, looked, from
Mining Town: A Photographic Record of T. N. Barnard and Nellie Stockbridge from the Coeur d'Alenes,
by Patricia Hart and Ivar Nelson, University of Washington Press, 1984.

President Roosevelt in Wallace, from Hart and Nelson,
Mining Town.

Anti—Forest Service sentiment, various editorials from
Butte Miner.

Death of Boyd and the parrot, from Hult,
Northwest Disaster,
and various newspaper accounts,
Idaho Press
and
Spokane Spokesman-Review,
August 21–22, 1910.

Evacuation and the trains, from
Wallace Press Times,
August 21, 1912, story on anniversary of fire.

Hysterical people, reaction during the evacuation, from
Spokane Spokesman-Review
and
The Missoulian,
August 21, 1910.

Forest Service message on town burning, from National Archives, Seattle.

1. "A Peculiar Intimacy"

Wrestling, Roosevelt and Pinchot at governor's mansion, from
Breaking New Ground,
by Gifford Pinchot, commemorative edition, Island Press, 1998.

Owen Wister remark on Pinchot, quoted in
Theodore Rex,
by Edmund Morris, Random House, 2001.

Made an ass remark, from Gifford Pinchot's diaries, multiple dates, from the Papers of Gifford Pinchot: Letters, Books, and Diaries, Library of Congress.

Roosevelt on corruption in Albany, from his autobiography.

Roosevelt on climbing the Matterhorn, from
Theodore Roosevelt—Letters and Speeches.

Roosevelt hunting grizzly bear with a knife, from
The United States Forest Service: A History,
by Harold K. Steen, University of Washington Press, 1976.

Roosevelt's appreciation of wilderness, Roosevelt on acting unafraid, Roosevelt on Harvard, Roosevelt sparring mate wanted for burglary, and Roosevelt on saving bison: from his autobiography.

Roosevelt, the death of his wife and his mother, and his diary entry, from the Theodore Roosevelt Association,
www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/timeline.htm.

Roosevelt, unable to say wife's name after her death, cited in
New York Times Book Review,
January 11, 2009.

Roosevelt on his ignorance of poverty early on, from his autobiography.

Roosevelt on the western roundup, from
Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884—1918,
Scribner's, 1925.

Roosevelt quote on what he owes to the West, from his autobiography.

Pinchot on craving action, on being alone, from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground.

Pinchot early life, and gilded idlers, from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground,
and from Pinchot papers.

Pinchot in France, from his diaries, November 3, 1890.

Pinchot on being footless and useless, from his diaries, July 8, 1891, and from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground.

Pinchot's grandfather the logger, other family connections, from
Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism,
by Char Miller, Island Press, 2001.

Pinchot on meeting John Muir, from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground.

Muir's early life and philosophy, from
The Life of John Muir,
by Donald Worster, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Muir and Pinchot relationship, from
The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy,
by Robert W. Righter, Oxford University Press, 2005.

More on Muir and Pinchot, from
Shapers of the Great Debate on Conservation,
by Rachel White Scheuering, Greenwood Press, 2004.

All slept in tent except Pinchot, from Steen,
The United States Forest Service.

Pinchot comment, rotten as usual, from Pinchot diaries, July 8, 1891.

Pinchot and Muir at the Grand Canyon, and the tarantula, from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground.

Pinchot boxing again and wrestling with Roosevelt, from Pinchot diaries, November 11, 1899.

Cleveland action put forestry on the map, from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground.

Pinchot, of all the foes, fire is the worst, from
A Primer of Forestry,
by Gifford Pinchot, National Archives, Seattle, 1900.

Timber owners' abuse, from Pinchot,
Breaking New Ground.

Roosevelt comment after death of McKinley, September 23, 1901, from
Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.

Roosevelt on wanting a radical Republican Party, from his autobiography.

Roosevelt quote, peculiar intimacy, from letter to Gifford Pinchot, February 24, 1909,
Theodore Roosevelt—Letters and Speeches,
also cited in
The Forest Service,
by Michael Frome, Westview Press, 1984.

2. Roost of the Robber Barons

William Clark background, from
Montana: A History of Two Centuries,
by Michael P. Malone, Richard B. Roeder, and William L. Lang, University of Washington Press, 1976.

More on Clark, from
The Montana Heritage,
edited by Robert Swartout Jr. and Harry W. Fritz, Montana Historical Society, 1992.

Mark Twain quote on Clark, from
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress,
www.bioguide.congress.gov
.

Clark's worth, reported in
New York Times,
May 27, 1906.

Roosevelt on being a westerner, from Morris,
Theodore Rex.

Roosevelt on Clark's face, quoted in
The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,
edited by H. W. Brands, Cooper Square Press, 2001.

Roosevelt money-getting quote, cited in
Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia,
edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and Herbert R. Ferleger, Roosevelt Memorial Association, 1941.

Roosevelt and Pinchot on the fights ahead, from
Theodore Roosevelt and His Time,
by Harold Howland, Yale University Press, 1925.

Roosevelt quote, skins the land, conservation talk of May 6, 1903, from Hart and Ferleger, eds.,
Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia.

Background on John Muir, from
The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy,
by Stephen Fox, Little, Brown, 1981.

Muir on wilderness as a tonic, from John Muir,
Our National Parks,
Houghton Mifflin, 1901.

Muir on stuffing Roosevelt, from Morris,
Theodore Rex.

Roosevelt quote on whether there is a law that prevents him from creating wildlife refuge, from
The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt,
by Lewis L. Gould, University of Kansas Press, 1991.

J. J. Hill quote, give me enough Swedes, from
The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History,
by Carlos A. Schwantes, University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Hill's background, from
James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest,
by Albro Martin, Minnesota Historical Society, 1991.

Six dollars an acre, from
www.historylink.org
.