Observances this weekend in Idaho will mark the centennial of the 1910 Big Burn, a devastating fire that consumed 5,000 square miles of forest across Washington, Idaho and Montana, killing 78 fire fighters. Though the Big Burn occurred a century ago, the impacts of the fires remain felt today in wild land fire management and forest policy.
Read more about how the Big Burn shaped Oregon’s forests here: http://egov.oregon.gov/ODF/newsroom/newsreleases/2010/NR1041.shtml
Additional information about the 1910 Big Burn is available on the U.S. Forest Service Region One website, http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/1910-centennial/index.html