The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America Book

Earlier this year I had the privilege of reading the work of Timothy Egan for the first time. Writing about a subject I knew nothing about, he made the story come alive. Egan has previously won a National book award for nonfiction for his work, so I knew that I had discovered a special author. With summer past it's halfway mark, I wanted to read another of Egan's books and found one that seemed appropriate for the season. This time I did know something about the subject matter, as Theodore Roosevelt is one of my 20th century heroes. I will read anything featuring him, so with a gifted author, and a personal American treasure, I knew that I was in for a special book.

By the time of the gilded age, the American west had officially been "closed". Homesteaders had settled in cities across the Great Plains, and cities sprung up as far as Phoenix and Seattle. With the transcontinental railroad approaching forty years old, Americans had taken advantage of the manifest destiny prophecy and settled the country from sea to shining sea. Yet, hundreds of thousands of acres of unexplored land remained, virgin forests, pristine lakes, as well as scintillating mountain peaks. Logging companies saw it as their right to saw down trees centuries years old in order to build homes and towns that emerged in outposts as remote as Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and Butte, Montana. Unless a friend of the forest could speak for the trees, American wilderness would fall into the hands of the loggers and robber barons.

Theodore Roosevelt has said that he was as much of a westerner as an easterner. Suffering from asthma as a child, he vowed to remake his body and spent hours in the great outdoors. He felt as much at home in the Badlands of the Dakotas as he did in the upper crust society from which he came. When he became president at age forty two following the assassination of President McKinley, Roosevelt rebranded the Republican Party as progressive, speaking for the middle and working classes. Clearly ahead of his time, Roosevelt tabbed his close friend Gifford Pinchot to become the first Chief Forester of the United States. Trained in France and influenced by conservationist John Muir, Pinchot belong in the outdoors, camping in Yosemite, surveying land along the Pacific coastline, and touring Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Roosevelt lived for these adventures as well, and, despite opposition from robber barons in the senate, managed to create the National Park system during his presidency. The land was for the people to enjoy, not for robber barons to destroy. After Roosevelt anointed William Howard Taft as his successor in 1908, the battle for conservation would come to dominate Taft's presidency.

President Taft was a jurist and desired to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a post he would later hold. Although Roosevelt's successor, from the early days of his presidency it was clear that he allied himself with big business. In a controversial move, he fired Pinchot, and the National Parks were doomed to destruction. Pinchot lobbied for the preservation of the land as an outsider and established Forest Rangers within the parks. The necessity of the Rangers and their knowledge of the land would come to a head on August 20, 1910 outside of Wallace, Idaho, a mining outpost where copper and ore miners had stripped and land and felled the trees. In an unusually hot summer with a warm wind stirring in the Pacific Northwest, it was only a matter of time before the forests of Idaho, Montana, and western Washington were set on fire. With Taft vacationing at his summer home, it was up to Pinchot and his rangers to save thousands of innocent lives and prevent total destruction of the forests.

The Big Burn fire of 1910 is still believed to be the largest in American history. The residue was felt as far away as Chicago and brought conservation to the forefront of American consciousness. In describing the fire, Egan's story reads like a fast paced thriller, as readers get to know the rangers and civilians who saved lives of the citizens of Wallace, Idaho and surrounding areas. One feisty character was Ione "Pinkie" Adair, a sharpshooting woman who later became a school teacher. During the rescue she would cook potatoes for sixty firefighters and then walk thirty miles to safety. Adair would end up as the longest living survivor of the Big Burn Fire. Americans at this point would have little patience with Taft and his big business cronies in Congress and turn to the Progressivism of Roosevelt and Pinchot once again to save the wilderness from destruction. Although Roosevelt would never again hold higher office, his presence was enough to lead future presidents to expand the national park system, preserving land for future generations to enjoy.

While I found some passages in the Big Burn to be redundant, I enjoyed Egan's account of a devastating fire that swung the American pendulum in favor of progressive thought, which included conservation. Having read about Roosevelt in the past, I knew about the politics of the era, but Egan captivated my attention in this account of a fire that read like a thriller. I grew up to hearing Smokey the Bear proclaiming that "only you can prevent forest fires," and Smokey's message inevitably had its roots in the fire of 1910. The national parks are treasures and it is doubtful that one can visit all of them in a lifetime. Egan brought the story of their formation to life in this compelling story, featuring one of the giants of the American presidency.

3.75 stars (downgraded .25 stars for some repetitive passages)