Forestry Notes. 



265 



FORESTRY NOTES. 



Edited by Professor William R. Dudley. 



The Great The week from Sunday, September 4, to Septem- 

 Forest Fire. ber 11, 1904, was a week of the highest temper- 

 ature and of the most extensive and disastrous 

 forest fires on record in the Santa Cruz Mountain region. On 

 Wednesday and Thursday, the hottest days, the thermometers 

 registered from 106 to no degrees Fahrenheit in many places. 

 No forest fires existed on Saturday, the 3d; on Sunday one 

 appeared on the side of Ben Lomond Mountain, west of Ben 

 Lomond; on Monday a fire broke out on Zeyante Creek; on 

 Tuesday a fire started above the electric-power works on Big 

 Creek, spread with great rapidity, and burned to death one man ; 

 on Wednesday fires broke out in all directions above Santa Cruz 

 and Soquel, but the greatest of all near the mills at the head of 

 Pescadero Creek. The latter spread southward for nearly ten 

 miles, entered the California Redwood Park Wednesday night, 

 and by the Monday following, when it was under control, had 

 burned over one third the State's lands, many miles of private 

 property, consumed perhaps a half-dozen homes, including one 

 valuable summer residence, and had made all the roads in that 

 part of the county impassable. Eye-witnesses viewing the basin 

 of San Lorenzo River and its tributaries and the Ben Lomond 

 and Butano ridges on Thursday night represent the scene as 

 appalling. The writer, pursuing his way toward the park on 

 horseback, on half of Friday night, saw the silhouettes of the 

 great redwoods and Douglas spruces on the Butano Ridge miles 

 to the southwest one by one burst into flames that shot to the 

 tops like a flash. The trees then disappeared in the lurid smoke 

 or stood as columns of fire. The air was clear to the north, 

 and the appearance of the great volumes of smoke and flame 

 rolling up from the forests of the ridge was like the eruption 

 of a volcano at night. 



Fortunately the State park suffered less than many other 

 virgin tracts of timber in that region. By strenuous efforts the 

 warden and the fire-fighters confined the fire largely to the cut- 

 over and chaparral — the "thrown in" portions of the purchase. 

 The beautiful forest about the Governor's camp and the larger 

 and more valuable part of the park west of the East Waddell 

 remains untouched by fire. Most of the redwoods which were 



