The Tillamook Burn was a series of forest fires in the Northern Oregon Coast Range of Oregon in the United States that destroyed a total area of 350,000 acres (140,000 hectares) of old growth timber in what is now known as the Tillamook State Forest. There were four wildfires in this series, which spanned the years of 1933–1951. By association, the name Tillamook Burn also refers to the location of these fires. This event is an important part of Oregon's history.
The first fire started in a ravine at the headwaters of Gales Creek on August 14, 1933. The exact cause of the first fire is unknown; however, the common narrative states that as logging crews were wrapping up operations early due to fire hazard restrictions, a steel cable dragging a fallen Douglas fir rubbed against the dry bark of a wind-fallen snag. The snag burst into flame, and the wildfire that grew out of this burned 350,000 acres (140,000ha) before it was extinguished by seasonal rains on September 5.[1] An oppressive, acrid smoke filled the neighboring valleys; ashes, and cinders, and the charred needles of trees fell in the streets of Tillamook; and debris from the fire reached ships 500 miles (800km) at sea. A Civilian Conservation Corps member was the only known human casualty of fighting the fire.[1] The loss in processed lumber was estimated to have been $442.4million in contemporary (1933) dollars—a serious loss not only to the timber industry at the time, but also to a nation struggling with the Great Depression. A massive salvage operation was immediately begun to harvest usable portions of the burned wilderness.
The speed with which a forest fire can spread in heavy fuels under the most hazardous conditions is well illustrated by this fire. From August 14 at 1 p.m. until the early morning of August 24 the fire had burned about 40,320 acres (16,320ha) and it appeared that it might be brought under control soon. Thus, for over 10 days it had burned at an average rate of about 3,840 acres (1,550ha) a day. On August 24, the humidity dropped rapidly to 26 percent and hot gale force winds from the east sprang up. During the next 20 hours of August 24 and 25 the fire burned over an additional 268,800 acres (108,800ha), or at a rate of 13,440 acres (5,440ha) per hour along a 15-mile (24km) front. The fire was stopped only by the fact that the wind ceased and a thick, wet blanket of fog drifted in from the ocean.[2]
Second fire (1939)
The second fire was started in 1939, allegedly by another logging operation. It burned 190,000 acres (77,000ha) before being extinguished, and was contained within the bounds of the earlier fire.
Third fire (1945)
A third fire started on the morning of July 9, 1945, near the Salmonberry River, and was joined two days later by a second blaze on the Wilson River, started by a discarded cigarette. This fire burned 180,000 acres (73,000ha) before it was put out. The cause of the blaze on the Salmonberry River was mysterious, and many believed it had been set by an incendiary balloon launched by the Japanese (due to the fire occurring in the waning days of World War II), which had been carried to Oregon by the jet stream.
The third fire was perhaps the best known, after the initial wildfire, because it affected much of the forested mountains along the popular highways between Portland and the recreational destinations of the ocean beaches. This devastation remained visible to any traveler through the area as late as the mid-1970s.
Fourth fire (1951)
The last fire started in 1951, and burned only 32,000 acres (13,000ha). It was also confined within the burned-over area.
Salvage operations
Immediately after the first fire, new logging camps formed and existing ones expanded operations. At the time, access to the forest was limited and the railroad lines did not yet extend into the inner reaches of the forest.
The town of Timber expanded during the time and became a prominent logging town along with the smaller town of Cochran to the west. Some of the logging companies near Glenwood joined their operations to form the Consolidated Timber Company. The lumber from these operations played an important part in providing wood resources to the United States during World War II.
Throughout the subsequent years, miles of roads and railroad lines and were built through the forest to the various logging camps providing enhanced access. This made it easier for forestry restoration, maintenance, and fire prevention operations allowing them eventually to get a handle on the continued series of burns, however it had the secondary effect of creating new issues with erosion among a terrain known for landslides.
Restoration
The repeated fires led some to think that large wildfires in the area were inevitable and that the land was now too damaged from the intense heat to ever again sustain forests.[3] But determined efforts by Oregonians—private citizens, government officials, land owners and many others—resulted in efforts to restore The Burn, beginning with hearings during World War II under Judge H. D. Kerkman of Washington County and eventually resulting in a decades-long reforestation program.[4] Much of the lands of the Tillamook burn had come to be owned by the counties of Tillamook, Yamhill, and Washington through foreclosures on unpaid property taxes; at the time of the forest fires, most of the land was owned by timber companies, which also paid the cost of fighting the fires. A measure was submitted by the Legislative Assembly to the voters to float a bond to finance reforestation, which narrowly passed in 1948.
In a book published that same year, Stewart Holbrook wrote about the Tillamook Burn in Northwest Corner: Oregon and Washington:
[Reforestation] can never compensate for that tragedy we call the Tillamook Burn, as somber a sight as to be viewed this side of the Styx. There they stand, millions of ghostly firs, now stark against the sky, which were green as the sea and twice as handsome, until an August day of 1933, when a tiny spark blew into a hurricane of fire that removed all life from 300,000 acres (120,000ha) of the finest timber even seen. It was timber, too, that had been 400 years in the making. It was wiped out in a few seething hours which Oregon will have reason to remember well past the year 2000. To this day the forest stands powerless against the threat of wildfires.
Reforestation was performed simultaneously with research by the forest industry into the best methods of growing and planting the young trees (including how to protect them from the ravages of deer, beavers, mice and other wildlife). Young people from northwest Oregon helped with the hand-planting of seedlings. Between 1949 and 1972, they planted about a million seedlings, a massive number but still only about 1percent of the total of 72million seedlings replanted by all means.[5] Everything from state prisoners to newly designed helicopters played a part in the reseeding program over the years.[6] Eventually the forest began to return and in 1973, Oregon Governor Tom McCall dedicated the Tillamook Burn as the Tillamook State Forest.[5]
At the time the reforestation of the Tillamook Burn began, some assumed that the forest land would, when the trees were mature, be harvested for lumber. Current environmental beliefs have questioned this assumption, and both the proportions and specific parts of this land that will be logged or conserved for wildlife are in dispute.
In popular culture
Poet and author Albert Drake titled a 1970s book of poems and essays, Tillamook Burn, from his experiences growing up in Oregon.[7]
The Salmonberry River is a tributary of the Nehalem River, about 20 miles (32 km) long, in northwest Oregon in the United States. It drains a remote unpopulated area of the Northern Oregon Coast Range in the Tillamook State Forest about 65 miles (105 km) west-northwest of Portland. The river runs through part of the region devastated between 1933 and 1951 by a series of wildfires known as the Tillamook Burn.
The Biscuit Fire was a massive wildfire in 2002 that burned nearly 500,000 acres in the Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest, in southern Oregon and northern California, in the Western United States. The fire was named after Biscuit Creek in southern Oregon. The Biscuit Fire was the second-largest wildfire in the modern post-1900 history of Oregon. Oregon's largest fires are actually believed to have taken place in the 1800s. The Silverton Fire of 1865 is listed as Oregon's largest at over 900,000 acres. The Biscuit Fire area is subject to warm, dry winds known as the Brookings effect, driven by high pressure over the Great Basin. The fire re-burned portions of the 1987 Silver Fire, and much of its area was re-burned in the 2017 Chetco Bar Fire.
The Yacolt Burn is the collective name for dozens of fires in Washington state and Oregon occurring between September 8 and September 12, 1902, causing 38 deaths in the Lewis River area, at least nine deaths by fire in Wind River and 18 deaths in the Columbia River Gorge.
Elk State Forest is a Pennsylvania State Forest in Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry District #13. The main offices are located in Emporium in Cameron County, Pennsylvania.
The Tillamook State Forest is a 364,000-acre (1,470 km2) publicly owned forest in the U.S. state of Oregon. Managed by the Oregon Department of Forestry, it is located 40 miles (64 km) west of Portland in the Northern Oregon Coast Range, and spans Washington, Tillamook, Yamhill, and Clatsop counties. The forest receives large amounts of precipitation and is dominated by Douglas-fir trees. Activities include commercial logging, recreation, and other commercial resource extraction activities such as mushroom hunting.
The Opal Creek Wilderness is a wilderness area located in the Willamette National Forest in the U.S. state of Oregon, on the border of the Mount Hood National Forest. It has the largest uncut watershed in Oregon.
Simon B. Elliott State Park is a 318-acre (129 ha) Pennsylvania state park located in Pine Township, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is surrounded by Moshannon State Forest. The park is entirely wooded with second growth forests of mixed oak species, including northern red oak, chestnut oak, shagbark hickory, red maple, and tulip poplar, and northern hard woods, including sugar maple, black cherry, aspen, birch, hemlock, and ash. S. B. Elliott State park is 9 miles (14 km) north of Clearfield on Pennsylvania Route 153 just off exit 111 of Interstate 80.
Parker Dam State Park is a 968-acre (392 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Huston Township, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is surrounded by Moshannon State Forest. Parker Dam State park is 17 miles (27 km) north of Clearfield on Pennsylvania Route 153 just off exit 111 of Interstate 80. The park was constructed during the Great Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps; they built many of the facilities that are in use today at Parker Dam State Park.
The Great Southern Lumber Company was chartered in 1902 to harvest and market the virgin longleaf pine forests in southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi. Bogalusa, Louisiana was developed from the ground up as a company town and was the location for Great Southern Lumber Company's sawmill, which began operation in 1908. Other company interests included a railroad and paper mill. The company ceased operation in 1938, when the supply of virgin pines was depleted. Bogalusa became the site of a paper mill and chemical operations, followed by other industry.
Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest is a state forest in Lake County, California that covers the northwest of Boggs Mountain. It was founded in 1949, and came into operation in 1950 when most of the site had been clear cut. The purpose was to demonstrate good practices in restoring and managing a forest. The state forest was open for recreational use, including camping, hiking, mountain biking etc. The 2015 Valley Fire destroyed 80% of the trees. The state forest as of 2021 was replanting saplings.
Santiam State Forest is one of six state forests managed by the Oregon Department of Forestry. The forest is located approximately 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Salem, Oregon, and includes 47,871 acres (193.73 km2) on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains in three Oregon counties: Clackamas, Linn, and Marion. It is bounded on the east by the Willamette National Forest and Mount Hood National Forest. Silver Falls State Park is located west of the forest. The rest of the land surrounding the forest belongs to the Bureau of Land Management or is privately owned. The forest is managed as part of the Department of Forestry's North Cascade District.
Glenwood is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Oregon, United States, northwest of Forest Grove on Oregon Route 6.
The Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad (POTB) was a 101-mile (163 km) shortline railroad in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Purchased from the Southern Pacific Transportation Company in 1990 by the Port of Tillamook Bay, the railroad was used to transport lumber and agricultural products over the Northern Oregon Coast Range between the Oregon Coast and the Portland area until heavily damaged in a 2007 storm. The Port of Tillamook Bay began operating the unincorporated railroad on March 27, 1986, but the tracks were originally constructed by Oregon judge George R. Bagley and others in 1906. The railroad's main line, no longer in use due to storm damage, runs between Hillsboro and Tillamook.
The Mount Emily Lumber Company operated in La Grande, Oregon from 1920 until 1956. After becoming a subsidiary of the Valsetz Lumber Company in 1955, the name was changed to Templeton Lumber Company. In 1960, the company was again sold and the name changed to Boise Cascade, La Grande.
The 2015 Oregon wildfires were an ongoing series of wildfires affecting parts of the U.S. state of Oregon.
The Barry Point Fire was a wildfire that burned over 92,977 acres (376.26 km2) of Oregon and California forest land during the summer of 2012. The fire began on 5 August 2012, the result of a lightning strike. The fire consumed public forest and rangeland as well as private forest and grazing land located in Lake County, Oregon and Modoc County, California. The public lands effected by the fire are administered by the United States Forest Service and the Oregon Department of Forestry. The largest part of the private land was owned by the Collins Timber Company. At the peak of the firefighting effort, there were 1,423 personnel working on the fire. It took 22 days to fully contain the fire and then an additional three weeks to mop it up.
The Forests Department was a department of the Government of Western Australia created in 1919 under Conservator of Forests Charles Lane Poole, that was responsible for implementing the State's Forests Act (1918–1976) legislation and regulations.
Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company was a lumber products company with large sawmills and significant land holdings in Minnesota, Florida, British Columbia, and Central Oregon. The company was formed in 1901 with its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beginning in 1915, its main lumber production facility was in Bend, Oregon. For many years, its Bend sawmill was one of the largest lumber producers in the world. In 1969, the company created Brooks Resources to broaden its business base beyond timber production. Brooks-Scanlon's Bend sawmill was closed in 1994. Today, Brooks Resources is the only vestige of the company that is still in business.
Consolidated Timber Company was an American lumber company that operated a large sawmill near Glenwood, Oregon, circa 1936–1946.
The Bootleg Fire, named after the nearby Bootleg Spring, was a large wildfire that started near Beatty, Oregon, on July 6, 2021. Before being fully contained on August 15, 2021, it had burned 413,765 acres. It is the third-largest fire in the history of Oregon since 1900. At the fire's fastest growth in mid July, it grew at about 1,000 acres (400 ha) per hour, and it became the second largest wildfire in the United States of the 2021 wildfire season.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
