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FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



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acres were burned over about 8 miles 

 north of Bedford. 



New Jersey. Large tracts of land in 

 the vicinity of Lakewoodand Lakehurst 

 were burned over June 4. Special trains 

 were sent with crews to fight the fires, 

 which at first were uncontrollable. The 

 burned tracts were along the line of the 

 Ridgeway branch of the Central Rail- 

 road of New 7 Jersey, and the flames were 

 presumably started by sparks from lo- 

 comotives. 



New York. The June fires in the 

 Adirondacks were but continuations of 

 those which started in April, though the 

 scene of the heaviest fires shifted from 

 the Lake Placid region, the storm center 

 of the principal earlier conflagrations, 

 to the Catlin Lake and Cold River coun- 

 try. On June 6 Governor Odell author- 

 ized the state comptroller to furnish 

 Colonel Fox, forest commissioner, with 

 funds to more effectually fight the 

 flames. Opinions had been expressed 

 that Colonel Fox had been hampered 

 in the goodw r ork he was doing with his 

 army of fire-fighters by a lack of funds. 

 On June 8 the drought which had pre- 

 vailed for nine weeks was broken by 

 heavy rains. Although more than an 

 inch fell the fires were not entirely 

 quenched, as they were burning deep 

 in the forest floor, and only days of 

 downpour can effectually extinguish 

 them. With the force of men in the 

 field to fight the remaining fires, it is 

 felt that all danger is practically over. 

 On June 10 Samuel Pasco, indicted for 

 the offense of starting fires which wiped 

 out villages and swept away millions of 

 dollars' worth of property, was arrested 

 near Glens Falls. He did not attempt 

 to explain his motive in setting the 

 fires. Estimates of the damage done 

 in New York are scarcely trustworthy 

 as yet, but conservative computations, 

 based on the calculations of persons who 



ought to know, place the loss at not less 

 than $5,000,000, and it is possible that 

 a full investigation will show more. 



Michigan. Forest fires raged for 

 three days following June 13 near Eck- 

 erman and other points in the northern 

 Michigan peninsula, much standing tim- 

 ber as well as logs, cordwood, and tan- 

 bark being burned. 



Washington. Reports from Seattle, 

 dated June 1 1 , state that fires threaten 

 serious destruction near the town of 

 Enumclaw, which narrowly escaped de- 

 struction in the fires of last fall. The 

 woods are ablaze all around Granite 

 Falls, and Ellsworth Camp, on Nasel 

 River, was destroyed, with a loss of 

 about $10,000. The fire burned through 

 about three sections of timber owned by 

 the Weyerhauser syndicate. 



California. A newspaper report from 

 Chinese Camp states that lightning ig- 

 nited dry grass and caused a fire which 

 spread over 30,000 acres on Hughes 

 Brothers' grazing range on Marsh's 

 Flat. This range runs into the moun- 

 tains, and as there were 3,000 head of 

 horses and cattle on it, it is thought 

 that many of them undoubtedly per- 

 ished. This fire started June 8. On 

 June 1 8 more than 2,000 acres of graz- 

 ing land were burned over near Beals- 

 ville, on the summit of Bear Mountain, 

 in Kern county. 



Canada. The villages of Hopewell 

 Cape and Musquash, in New Bruns- 

 wick, have been reported destroyed as 

 a result of forest fires which surrounded 

 them for days before the fire-fighters 

 were driven back. Two steamers were 

 destroyed, several bridges, many resi- 

 dences and manufacturing plants, as 

 well as the court-house of Albert county , 

 in which Hopewell was situated. About 

 800 people were left destitute. Fire in 

 the Laurentian region near Montreal 

 was still burning fiercely on June 5. 



