658 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



essary to take horses in to carry food, 

 bedding, and tools for fire fighting. A 

 trail must either be cut out to a point 

 near enough to reach the fire from 

 camp or the horses taken slowly and 

 painfully trough country covered with 

 tangles of down timber and dense 

 thickets, w^ith the risk that in case the 

 fire got well started there might be 

 some difficulty in getting out again. 

 Meanwhile the fire is gaining headway, 

 and the ranger finr's on reaching it that 

 he can make no impression on it and 

 needs 20 to 50 men to control it. He 

 proceeds to the nearest telephone sta- 

 tion and the men are sent in from some 

 town, or in rare circumstances they 

 may be recruited from settlers nearby. 

 Their beds, provisions and cooking 

 outfit are packed in 20 to 75 miles on 

 animals hired for the purpose, and 

 after a delay of from 3 to 7 days they 

 leach the fire. 



By this time it is so large that they 

 cannot entirely subdue it, but can only 

 check its progress, head it ofif, gradu- 

 ally surround it, and, if rains come or 

 the wind does not blow too hard, hold 

 it within narrow limits. Then, sooner 

 or later, a high wind is sure to occur, 

 and these smouldering fires leap up 

 and across the trenches and sweep over 

 wide areas in a single day. 



In the South Fork valley, east of 

 Swan Valley, an area of no miles long 

 had to be protected by a force of 

 guards so small that it was impossible 

 for them to at once reach and put out 

 fires starting from such causes. One 

 fire which resulted from the careless- 

 ness of a half-witted youth who w^as 

 hunting in the mountains, got such a 

 start that a crew was necessary. 



This crew was sent in accompanied 

 by fifty pack horses, but had to stop on 

 the way to control three other fires, 

 and the first fire before they could get 

 to it. had burned over a township. The 

 ranger in the Swan Valley had in- 

 structions to look up this youth and es- 



cort him out of the forest, and would 

 have done so had it not been for the 

 fires set by lightning in the Swan Val- 

 ley, which prevented him. 



On the w^est side of the range a 

 similar situation developed. A fire got 

 away from the ranger through the 

 impossibility of his reaching it in time. 

 This fire was burning during the w'eek 

 preceeding the great fire in Idaho. The 

 same wind that caused such destruc- 

 tion there, blew this fire across the 

 timbered summit of the range and 

 swept it down into the valley with a 

 fury that made all attempts to stem it 

 hopeless for the time. Burning brands 

 and bark were blown across the Swan 

 River and fires started for three miles 

 along the further bank. By great good 

 fortune this wind was followed by rain 

 which enabled us to attack the fire, and 

 by ten days' work with 20 men who 

 were already on the ground its further 

 progress was prevented. 



This in a small way illustrates the 

 conditions which caused the larger con- 

 flagrations in Idaho. Wherever fires 

 were set in low ground, along railroads 

 and trails, in inhabited districts, they 

 were controlled promptly. But, largely 

 through lightning, many fires were 

 started that could not be reached. These 

 fires, on the day of the great wind, 

 swept down on the protected areas in 

 solid fronts miles in extent and de- 

 stroyed the work of weeks of fighting. 



When the national forests are provid- 

 ed with complete systems of trails, 

 when enough men are employed to 

 reach and control fires as soon as they 

 start, and when, by the operation of 

 the Forest Homestead Act and the de- 

 velopment of transportation, vast 

 stretches of wilderness become popu- 

 lated as far as their resources will per- 

 mit, the conditions that proceeded the 

 great fires of 1910 will have been 

 brought fully under control, and a 

 repetition made impossible. 



