Forest Fires in the Intermountain Region. 3 
NUMBER AND SIZE OF FIRES IN THE INTERMOUNTAIN REGION. 
The intermountain region is popularly regarded as one in which 
forest fires are few and very small. It is true that this region has 
never suffered any such great conflagrations as have occurred from 
time to time in Michigan, Minnesota, and the Northwest. This 
broken mountainous country lacks the great continuous bodies 
of timber found in other regions, and fires start somewhat less 
easily and spread over less extensive areas. Nevertheless, in 
ordinary years from 400 to 500 forest fires occur here annually, 
and sometimes, as in 1919, there may be more than 700 fires in this 
region, popularly supposed to be almost without fire hazard. In the 
summer time, when smoke drifts in, it is commonly believed that 
all the fires are in northern Idaho and the far Northwest, for those 
fires are the ones that attain newspaper prominence. Nevertheless, 
in the 15 years the Forest Service has been fighting forest fires and 
keeping records in this region, 606,279 acres have been burned over. 
This is proof enough that the forests are very inflammable, and 
that tremendous fires can start and extend over large areas. In 
1910, when weather conditions were very bad, fires covered several 
hundred thousand acres in this region. It is perfectly possible that 
such conditions may be repeated. 
Consider what the burning of 600,000 acres of forested lands 
means. This area is practically 1,000 square miles—a territory 
almost as large as Cache County in Utah, or Ada or Bear Lake 
Counties in Idaho. Imagine an entire county devastated by 
fire, left desolate and barren. This is what forest fires mean in this 
region, and each year the area is being added to—a few thousand 
acres annually. | 
Figure 2 shows that the number of fires varies in different parts 
of the region, the worst situation existing in western Idaho. It 
would be an unwarranted conclusion from this showing that on the 
_ Utah and Nevada National Forests fires are so unlikely to occur 
_ that no efforts need be made to prevent or suppress them. Even 
within the last few years, with the Forest Service constantly on 
_ the alert, an area of about 10,000 acres was burned over in one year 
on the Cache National Forest near the Utah-Idaho line; and in 
Nevada, a State usually marked by very few and small forest fires, 
_ 3,000 acres were swept by flames on the Humboldt National Forest 
in one year. Throughout this region of southeastern Idaho and of 
Utah and Nevada, barren areas that testify eloquently of ancient 
fires are not hard to find. Furthermore, men who have studied the 
| problem carefully say that the great stretches of quaking aspen 
| found throughout the mountains of this region all show the marks 
_ of early fires, and, indeed, that these aspen stands owe their existence 
_ to such fires. 
| Lodgepole pine, too, is a species which almost always comes in 
- on old burns. Vast areas in western Wyoming and southeastern 
_ Idaho are covered with trees of this species to the exclusion of all 
else. Nearly all these areas, too, are believed to mark ancient burns. 
| Out of a total of about 18,000,000 acres covered with forest in this 
ee 
— — 
