The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

An uncontrolled wildfire in a woodland area of combustible vegetation.

A method of halting or redirecting the advance of wildfire by starting a fire directed towards the original fire to burn any fuel in the fire’s path.

Tumbling west winds that are violent and volatile, or in Egan’s words, “a battering ram of forced air” (154). Palousers in the Bitterroots exacerbated the many small fires raging and combined them into one large fire.

Towering columns of smoke which explode into flame, shooting fire hundreds of feet in the air. They can reach temperatures of 2,000 degrees.

Commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, or the Devil’s Broom, the Great Fire of 1910 was a wildfire that burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana, Washington, and British Columbia. Historians believe it is the largest wildfire in United States history.

Bitterroot National Forest, established in 1898, is 1.587 million acres of forest in Idaho and Montana.

Coeur d’Alene National Forest, established in 1906, is 726,362 acres of forest in Idaho.

Avery is an unincorporated community in the St. Joe River Valley, Idaho. It was established in 1909, named for a Rockefeller, and served for decades as a division point on the Pacific Extension for several railroad lines. 

Taft is now a ghost town in the Bitterroots of Montana. It was sarcastically named after President Taft in 1908. It burned in the Great Fire of 1910 and was not rebuilt.

An agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that manages 193 million acres of land, including the nation’s 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. It was founded in 1905 by President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot.

An informal name early forest rangers in the national Forest Service used to refer to individual rangers. “G.P.” stands for Gifford Pinchot: the rangers are Little G.P.s and Pinchot is the chief.

The 25th United States Infantry Regiment, informally known as Buffalo Soldiers, were a black-only regiment that served from 1866 to 1957. They fought in the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Brownsville Affair, World War I, and World War II. Their efforts saved thousands of lives in the Great Fire of 1910.

The United States national forest system consists of 154 protected areas covering 188,336,179 acres of land managed by the United States Forest Service. The first national forest was established in 1891 as the Yellowstone Park Timber and Land Reserve.

The United States has 62 federally protected national parks, operated by the National Park Service. National parks are established by an act of Congress. The first national park, Yosemite, was created in 1864 by the Lincoln administration.

The National Wildlife Refuge System designates protected areas managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. They are protected to conserve the country’s fish, wildlife, and plants. President Roosevelt designated Florida’s Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as the first wildlife refuge in 1903. The United States has 568 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts, covering over 150,000,000 acres.

A political party formed by former President Roosevelt during the 1912 election after incumbent President Taft secured the Republican Party nomination. The party’s platform consisted of progressive and populist reforms. After Roosevelt’s defeat in the 1912 election, the party disbanded.

An era of social activism and political reform in the United States lasting from the 1890s to the 1920s. Progressive reform objectives addressed industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption.

President Roosevelt’s domestic program with three goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.

An era of United States history that spanned from the 1870s to the end of the century, marked by rapid economic growth, immigration, industrialization, inequality, and poverty.

Timber cruisers were people hired by logging companies to stake out homesteads. Homesteading at this time was not farming, but rather a subterfuge to gain possession of land worthless for farming. Once timber cruisers gained legal possession of their land, they sold the land to logging companies. Egan writes, “The basic scheme was to find 160 acres, patent it with a shack that could be labeled a home on ‘agricultural’ ground, and then sell the land for a big profit to one of the timber companies, which were prohibited from homesteading” (80). In the Bitterroots, nearly 90% of the homesteads were frauds.