ANNUAL REPORT 1914 17 



working on the fire within three hours from the time it started. 



Backfiring was not tried unless there was a logging railroad 

 right-of-way or a good sized stream to work from, except in one 

 case where several million feet of decked logs and the town of 

 Bovill were at stake. Here we put about 150 men on three- 

 quarters of. a mile of trench, which was cut early in the morning, 

 and backfired. Men were scattered back half a mile from the 

 trench to put out the fires which started from the sparks that blew 

 over. Although there was an extremely high wind, we managed 

 to hold it all day and eventually got the fire out on that side. In 

 spite of almost superhuman efforts the main fire got a fresh start 

 at one time from about four million feet of logs, which were 

 cut and swamped on the side of Beal's Butte, and ran eight miles 

 in about four hours. --,< 



The v Moose Creek fire, which soon ran into the main fire r 

 started in Sec. 18, Twp. 41 N., R. 1 W., from the electrical storm 

 of August 17th and was discovered by Patrolman Erickson on 

 August 19th. Smoke from the large fire a mile and a half 

 away made it hard to see this one and it had burned over about 

 five acres before Erickson found it. The fire started in an old 

 burning and heavy buck brush made it impossible to hurry the 

 work of getting a trench around it. In some places the brush was 

 so bad that trails had to be cut to move men from one place to 

 another. This fire was backfired on the east side in the old slash- 

 ing and the back-firing was very successful. _JWe had a stream 

 and an old logging spur grade to work from and the wind was 

 generally favorable. We backfired about five miles here with a 

 crew of men under Patrolman Erickson. This was a very stub- 

 born, hot fire and it was found necessary to cut all snags and 

 stubs for a distance of ten rods from the trench. 



The fire in Twp. 42 N., Ranges 1 E. and 1 W., while very 

 close to the main fire in Twp. 41 N., R. 1 W., was undoubtedly 

 started by lightning on August 17th, but the dense smoke which 

 had settled over that part of the country made it impossible to 

 see the fire. At first there was some question about there being 

 a fire, but Mr. T. P. Jones, Woods Superintendent of the Potlatch 

 Lumber Company, and Mr. A. E. Dailey made a trip in and after 

 four or five hours search found it. It had then burned over 20 

 or 30 acres and was starting to burn up fiercely. 



The three fires referred to above burned over 16,609 acres, 

 fire killing 90,940,000 feet of merchantable timber. Of the area 

 burned 11,778 acres had been previously cut over or had no timber 

 of value on it. The area of merchantable timber burned over ag- 

 gregated 4,831 acres. 



These three fires are generally referred to as the Bovill fires, 

 since the entire area burned over by them is within a radius of 



