THE FOREST 195 



throwing it away, a campfire was left unextinguished, perhaps 

 an impatient farmer was foolish enough to burn brush in such 

 weather whatever happened, on the afternoon of October 12 

 a strong wind came up. It fanned the small fire into a roaring 

 blase. Cloquet, a town of 12,000 people, most of whom worked 

 in the sawmills, was caught in this sea of fire and wiped off the 

 face of the earth. Fortunately for the inhabitants of the town, 

 trains were able to rush them to safety before the town was 

 destroyed. But in the smaller settlements in the country around, 

 400 people were burned to death. Thirty million dollars worth 

 of timber and property was destroyed, and it was just a matter 

 of luck that saved the city of Duluth. Thus Cloquet celebrated 

 in a big way what might be called the second period of Ameri' 

 can forestry. 



Today Cloquet has been rebuilt. State highway No. 33 

 winds through the town which rarely extends beyond the 

 highway. In all directions as far as you can see is the great 

 scar left by the Cloquet burn, a few charred stumps and a 

 bristle of young aspen. You might ask what happened to the 

 12,000 inhabitants of Cloquet when they came back to the 

 smoking ruins of their town. Most of them didn't. They had to 

 start anew in some other place. If you go out along the roads you 

 will come across box'like houses covered with tarpaper, ram' 

 shackle barns, a few cows, and one or two flat fields with a not 

 very heavy crop. That's what happened to the inhabitants of 

 Cloquet who stayed behind. They are still trying to get a living 

 from the land, but that living is no richer than the burned' 

 over land. 



Traditionally in the United States, the pattern for land use 

 was something like this. The forest was cut. Land was taken 

 over by agriculture. Towns grew up, and finally there was an 

 urban center with factories surrounded by an agricultural area. 

 So far as Cloquet and a great many more of the lumber areas 



