The Big Burn
The 1910 Wildfires That Ravaged the American Northwest and Shaped the Forest Service
By Scott Stark With Contributions by Amy Kapp
As summer began, it was evident that trouble was smoldering in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho’s panhandle. The driest year in memory, the winter’s snowpack had melted early, and life-sustaining spring rains never fell. By August, what should have been swift-running rivers cascading down the northern Rocky Mountains were ghosts of their former selves, and many smaller creeks had simply ceased to exist, vanishing into the parched earth below. By late summer, some 9,000 firefighters were already at work trying to tamp out fires flaring up across millions of acres of kiln-dry forest. The Great Fire of 1910 was nigh. No single ignition source was responsible for what is estimated to be as many as 3,000 individual fires of varying size that merged into a deadly conflagration considered, if not the largest, certainly the most consequential, forest fire in U.S. history. Many flare-ups were sparked
PHOTOS: This page: Bank Street in Wallace, Idaho, in the aftermath of the Big Burn | Courtesy University of Idaho Library Digital Collections, Barnard- Stockbridge Photograph Collection. Opposite page: Forest Fire 1910 Telegram | Courtesy University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives.
Rails to Trails MAGAZINE | SPRING/SUMMER 2025
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