In just two days in August 1910, the largest wildfire in U.S.
history devoured 3 million acres in eastern Washington, Idaho
and Montana, leveling five towns and numberless trees and
leaving at least 85 people dead. Timothy Egan’s new book, The
Big Burn, chronicles the doomed effort to fight the fire and the
ensuing havoc, but it also tells a broader story, reflected in the
book’s subtitle: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved
America.
Let’s start with the battle that was fought in Washington, D.C. How did Teddy Roosevelt,
scion of a wealthy New York family, come to think of vast tracts of land in the West as
belonging to the public, in perpetuity?
Today, everybody accepts that we have public lands—an area the size of France nearly, counting
national forests, national parks and land held by the Bureau of Land Management—but then it
was really a radical, revolutionary thought. Roosevelt since he was a little kid just loved the
outdoors. It was magical for him, it saved him as a human being when he was sick, it brought
him back to life after his wife and his mother died on the same day. He had both this spiritual,
passionate attachment the outdoors, and he also had an intellectual attachment based on his
growing up with these naturalists in New York City.
The story I tell is about two rich guys: Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, who came from one of the
wealthiest families in the United States—his grandfather was a logger who clear-cut half of
Pennsylvania, and one of my theories is that he became a forester out of guilt. His family
founded the Yale School of Forestry. In the conservation movement there were several stands of
thought coming together—John Muir, and some naturalists on the East Coast—somewhat
incrementally. But Roosevelt realized early on in his presidency that he had the power to do it, to
create public lands. By executive order he could do it. So it’s two things: one is, he had the
passion all along, and then he realized he could do it by executive order and fight with Congress
later.
One of the most vivid characters in the book is Senator William A. Clark of Montana, a
copper baron whom you quote as saying, “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.” How
representative was he of the forces opposing Roosevelt?
He was such an openly corrupt individual. When he bought his Senate seat he did it with $100
bills stuffed inside envelopes—monogrammed envelopes. He was openly, joyously corrupt. He
lived most of his life, including his Senate years, in Manhattan, in a massive Gilded Age tower of
limestone and marble. He wanted to be the richest man in America, and he came damned close to
it. The biggest thing he wanted to do in the Senate was to stop national forests. He was joined
with these Gilded Age forces who thought setting aside public land was antithetical to the
American ideal and, more important, antithetical to their interests.
In 1905, Gifford Pinchot—TR’s dear friend, a founder of the conservation movement and
the man Roosevelt drafted to lead the fledgling United States Forest Service—vowed to
Congress that his agency could control fire in the newly designated national forests. That
was a bit of a rash promise, no?
That was really rash. Pinchot knew better, he knew fire was part of the natural cycle. But I think
he made a sort of pact with the devil, or with his own hubris. He thought that Congress would lay
off a little bit—and they were sniping left and right; they really did not want this forest agency to
take root. He thought the way to convince a majority of the people, especially in the West, was to
say, “Well, look, you may not believe in what Roosevelt and I are trying to do [in setting aside
land for public ownership], but at least we can safeguard your homesteads.” It’s almost Greek in
the way this huge fire would come back to haunt this guy.
The Yale-educated forest rangers that Pinchot hired were, in theory and by federal policy,
guardians of the people’s wealth. How did the people out West receive them?
It was an amazing culture clash. That time marked the end of the lawless West, and the time
when this public-land legacy would start to take over. You had these Yalies who’d been educated
in these high-minded ideals of Pinchot’s, and then they arrive in these little towns that were the
most openly lawless places in the country. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune called Taft,
Montana, which was inside a national forest, the “most wicked town in America.” It had a higher
murder rate than New York City. People look at the Forest Service today and they don’t realize
that its early days were pretty raucous. You had to carry a gun.
Once forest fires broke out in July 1910, people suddenly looked to the rangers for help.
But why was it so hard for the rangers to hire the help they needed?
Nobody knew anything about fighting fires. That was the first thing. There had never been in
United States history an organized effort to fight a wildfire. The second thing was, the pay was
okay—25 cents an hour—but you still had a better shot working a mine or trying to grubstake
someplace or selling a phony homestead. And the third and most important thing was, they were
really afraid of wildfire. It was a primeval thing. Wolves had been removed from the West,
grizzly bears had been erased, the Indians were all off on reservations, so the one thing that
remained that caused people deep-seated fear was wildfire. Oh, and the fourth thing is: you never
really believe something catastrophic can happen to you until it’s in your face.
About the fire: the forest service eventually assembled 10,000 firefighters, yet it seems that
they never to have had a chance. What conditions gave this fire its almost biblical scale?
Nobody had seen a fire of this magnitude. Basically, an area the size of Connecticut—3 million
acres—burned in 36 hours. Not even a full weekend. It stopped raining in about April that year,
which is very rare, so everything was tinder-dry. And then lightning strikes touched off all these
little fires. People were complaining about the persistent smoke, but they thought it would go
away. And then one night this wind comes out of eastern Washington, and it collides with
another weather system and creates these hurricane-force winds, in excess of 80 miles an hour.
And the worst thing that can happen to a wildfire is to have a stimulant of that sort. When the fire
was at its peak, people said it was faster than a horse or a man could ever run. For pure physical
force, we haven’t seen anything like it since.
So how, after all its chastening destruction, did this fire “save America”?
It saved America in this sense: it saved the public-land legacy. Now, people think public lands
are national parks, but they’re really a small part of it. The Forest Service is the primary landlord
of the American West. We have nearly 200 million acres of national forest land. At the time of
this fire, Roosevelt had left office and Congress was ready to kill the Forest Service. So the fire
had the ironic effect of saving the Forest Service, therefore saving America’s public-land legacy.
Now, almost a century later, what does that landscape look like? Is there any trace of the
fire?
There’s pretty second- and third-growth, though it’s not anything like the big, glorious white
pines they had at the time, or these lowland cedars that take 500 years to develop. If you walk
around there you can see still standing some of the blackened, scarred hulks from the Big Burn.
The one thing that was very emotional for me was to hike up the creek to the cave where one
forest ranger named Ed Pulaski saved all these people—now it’s a National Historic Site. One of
the things you can do in Wallace, Idaho, is walk the Pulaski Trail.
Source: Smithsonianmag.com
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE BIG BURN
1. This gripping account begins with the fire’s destruction of Wallace, Idaho. What kinds of
things make people late to the evacuating train? What would you bring with you if you were
allowed only a case small enough to fit on your lap?
2. With so much animosity between Pinchot and Roosevelt’s young Forest Service and the
“robber baron” businessmen, what ultimately brings people together to fight the Big Burn of
1910? How does Congress—still controlled by powerful business interests—fail the rangers and
citizens of the West after the fire has finished raging?
3. Egan details the childhood and early careers of both Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in
order to give readers a fuller picture of why and how these men came to pioneer conservation as
a national value in America. In what ways do Roosevelt’s experiences shape his politics? How do
Pinchot’s experiences influence his work as “Big G.P.” of the Forest Service?
4. Roosevelt and Pinchot are very different types of men, and yet they share a passion for the
great outdoors. What do Roosevelt and Pinchot have in common? How are they different from
one another?
5. Throughout the book, Egan reveals that some powerful men whose hubris and greed would
decide the fate of America’s still-untamed West spend time in that region, while others distance
themselves both literally and figuratively. Discuss the relationship these men have to the land
they all but rule over and the way Egan portrays them.
6. On page 112, Egan quotes Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe as wondering, “Why are you in
such a hurry?” He’s referring to the rush of “manifest destiny,” with America’s population
exploding from colonies of 2.9 million people to an ocean-to-ocean nation of 91 million. In the
first decade of the twentieth century alone, the populations of Idaho and Washington doubled.
Discuss the effect this rapid growth has on the young nation—why are they in such a hurry?
What does it cost them—and us?
7. In many ways, the battle against the forest fires of 1910 is a war of the disenfranchised.
Identify the players and discuss their roles in this epic disaster. Why do you think they answer
the call for labor when those with the most at stake—such as the “idle men” of Wallace—do
nothing?
8. Gifford Pinchot firmly believed that man could control forest fires, though he’d never seen
anything like the Big Burn of 1910 when he published his A Primer of Forestry in 1900. What
methods do the rangers and townsfolk use to try to control the fires? What methods do they use
to survive?
9. The aftermath of the Big Burn seems like one colossal governmental failure, though some
bright spots exist, such as the sea change in many Americans’ opinions about the black “buffalo
soldiers” who became heroes in Wallace, Idaho. How does Egan’s portrayal of this seminal
moment in American history make you feel? Did it change your mind about anything, or teach
you anything new?
10. William H. Taft is portrayed as a complicated man in this book. He idolizes Roosevelt and yet
fails to keep his promises to him; on page 246, Egan describes how he publicly attacks T.R. in an
effort to save face, but retreats afterward to weep in private. Do you feel any sympathy for Taft?
Why or why not?
11. Ten days after the fires die down, infuriated by Taft’s betrayal of his predecessor’s
conservation efforts, Teddy Roosevelt takes to the bully pulpit once more to pioneer a “New
Nationalism.” What does this term mean to him and to his supporters? Discuss how some of
these principles may still be seen alive and well in today’s America and how others have not
quite taken hold.
12. In the final chapter of the book, Egan describes the current landscape of what was once
several national forests in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. He shares how the Forest Service
still carries “the Pulaski” as their prized firefighting tool, and how the great “Milwaukee Road” is
now gone, its tracks pulled up and sold for scrap. Towns like Avery, Taft, and Grand Forks are
now gone or reduced to wilderness outposts. What effect does this chapter have on you, and
what message do you think the author hoped you would come away with?
(Questions issued by publisher)
Book Reviews
Egan weaves his account of the Big Burn with the creation story of the United States
Forest Service. This might seem a dull, bureaucratic yarn, but Egan tells it as the stirring
tale of a very odd couple: the irrepressible Teddy Roosevelt, who "burned 2,000 calories
before noon and drank his coffee with seven lumps of sugar," and his chief forester,
Gifford Pinchot, an ascetic loner who sometimes slept on a wooden pillow and for 20
years mystically clung to his deceased fiancee.
New York Times
In terms of sheer political courage, reforming the American health-care system is but a
minor parliamentary maneuver compared to the chutzpah mustered by Teddy Roosevelt
in 1907, when he established the national forest system. In one frenzied week, Roosevelt
and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, outlined 16 million acres of Western woodland
that they felt needed to be preserved.... Egan always writes insightfully about his native
region; here he commands the full sweep of characters, from the president on down to
the loneliest mining-town drunk. The only off note, in fact, is the book's subtitle, which
sells it just a little too hard. Did the Big Burn really "save America"?
Bill Gifford - Washington Post
Muir called Pinchot "someone who could relish, not run from a rainstorm"—a phrase
that also describes The Big Burn's narrator. For as long as Egan keeps chasing storms,
whether of dust, fire, rain or snow, you'd be smart to ride shotgun.
Los Angeles Times
[Egan] has already proved himself to be a masterly collector of memorable stories. His
new book, The Big Burn, continues in the same tradition.... What makes The Big Burn
particularly impressive is Egan’s skill as an equal-opportunity storyteller. By this I mean
that he recounts the stories of men and women completely unknown to most of us with
the same fervor he uses to report the stories of historic figures.... Even as we mark the
centennial of this great fire, wildfires in the West continue to burn. It makes this book—
which is a masterwork in every sense—worthy of a very careful reading.
Christian Science Monitor
(Starred review.) Egan, National Book Award winner for The Worst Hard Time, spins a
tremendous tale of Progressive-era America out of the 1910 blaze that burned across
Montana, Idaho and Washington and put the fledgling U.S. Forest Service through a
veritable trial by fire. Underfunded, understaffed, unsupported by Congress and
President Taft and challenged by the robber barons that Taft's predecessor, Theodore
Roosevelt, had worked so hard to oppose, the Forest Service was caught unprepared for
the immense challenge. Egan shuttles back and forth between the national stage of
politics and the conflicting visions of the nation's future, and the personal stories of the
men and women who fought and died in the fire: rangers, soldiers, immigrant miners
imported from all over the country to help the firefighting effort, prostitutes, railroad
engineers and dozens others whose stories are painstakingly recreated from scraps of
letters, newspaper articles, firsthand testimony, and Forest Service records. Egan brings
a touching humanity to this story of valor and cowardice in the face of a national
catastrophe, paying respectful attention to Roosevelt's great dream of conservation and
of an America for the little man.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Historians will enjoy Egan’s well-written book, featuring sparkling
and dynamic descriptions of the land and people, as a review of Roosevelt’s conservation
ideas, while general readers will find his suspenseful account of the fires mesmerizing.
Library Journal
Most reviewers thought that The Big Burn equaled or exceeded Egan's last book in both
its prose and its historical synthesis. The majority were impressed by his ability to
balance a riveting story with strong characters and an original analysis of the American
conservation movement.... [A] fine piece of writing, a powerful history, and a great read.
Bookmarks Magazine