480 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



the size of Maine and all the other New 

 England States. According to estimates 

 made several years ago by the Associa- 

 tion of American Railroads, the total 

 amount of labor it took to put out 

 those fires could maintain a right-of- 

 way wide enough and long enough for 

 nine trains to travel abreast from New 

 York to San Francisco. 



Destroyed by wildfires in those 10 

 years were billions of little trees that 

 might have become forests when for- 

 ests may be more sorely needed 10, 

 20, 50 years hence. Killed were enough 

 big trees to keep all our daily and Sun- 

 day papers in newsprint for 11 years; 

 or enough large trees, if made into 5- 

 room houses, to wipe out the entire 

 1947 housing shortage of the United 

 States, as estimated by the National 

 Housing and Home Finance Agency, 

 and leave some left over. 



Trees hoary with age offer evidence 

 that wildfires also occurred centuries 

 ago. In Great Forest Fires of America, 

 John D. Guthrie tells of basal scars 

 that record conflagrations in Califor- 

 nia's big tree forests as far back as 

 A. D. 245. Venerable Engelmann 

 spruces still bear scars from fires that 

 swept Colorado's mountain slopes in 

 1676, 1707, and 1781, he reports, and 

 white spruce trees register wildfires 

 that must have covered around 200 

 square miles in Maine 2 years before 

 the frigate Old Ironsides was launched 

 at Boston. 



As calamities, great wildfires rank 

 with floods, famines, and earthquakes. 

 Such calamities may not have been so 

 important when Indians formed the 

 only and a sparse population in 

 America, when they used fire as an aid 

 in collecting acorns and grasshoppers 

 for food, and when forests seemed in- 

 exhaustible. But many conditions have 

 changed since then, and chronicles of 

 the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 

 reveal what seems to be ample justifi- 

 cation for the statement. 



Those chronicles tell us, for example, 

 that 160 lives were lost when the Mi- 

 ramichi fire of 1825 roared across 3 

 million acres in New Brunswick, and 



that 1,500 people were killed by flames 

 and smoke and crashing trees when the 

 Peshtigo wildfire of 1871 wiped out 

 whole settlements as it ravaged a mil- 

 lion and a quarter acres in Wisconsin. 



Headstones in a forest-fringed ceme- 

 tery at St. Maries, Idaho, tell of the 

 death of 74 fire fighters who were 

 trapped and burned in northern Idaho 

 and western Montana by raging walls 

 of flame that jumped wide rivers 

 and laid waste a strip of mountain 

 country 20 to 35 miles wide and 120 

 miles long. That was in 1910, after 

 wearied men had brought 90 large 

 wildfires and 3,000 small ones under 

 control, despite months of high tem- 

 peratures and low humidities. Then 

 came sudden winds and catastrophe. 



High temperatures, low humidities, 

 and sudden winds also set the stage for 

 the Tillamook wildfire of August 1933. 

 In 11 days it roared through 267,000 

 acres of the finest virgin forests in 

 Oregon, and burned timber equal in 

 amount to the entire lumber cut of the 

 United States in 1932. 



But the damages wildfires do are 

 not confined to the timber killed and 

 the homes destroyed. Pocketbooks also 

 suffer. 



The 1947 Pellegrin fire, for instance, 

 was in a mixture of brush and grass 

 that may have seemed quite worthless 

 to the casual passerby. But the burning 

 of this range forced ranchers to find 

 other feed for 500 cattle for 6 months. 

 And it threatened heavy winter losses 

 among a herd of deer that for years had 

 attracted hunters and their dollars 

 to California communities. 



Farmers who manage their woodlands 

 for maximum returns on a long-time 

 basis, and who like to go hunting 

 now and then, know that even surface 

 fires often weaken cash-crop trees so 

 they are more easily thrown by the 

 wind. They know, too, that those fires 

 can kill young trees and destroy cov- 

 erts and nests of game birds and small- 

 game animals. 



Fishermen report that wood ashes in 

 streams sometimes kill large numbers 

 of trout. Sportsmen say it is not un- 



