Wildfire played a role on the Montana landscape long before President Abraham Lincoln agreed to make it a territory 150 years ago.
In 1804, William Clark noted the first recorded western wildfire near Fort Mandan, North Dakota, writing that it looked “tremendous” as it raced across the landscape. Lewis and Clark saw more blazes as they traveled west into what would eventually become Montana. And while wildfires were a rare spectacle to the newcomers from the east, anyone who has called the Treasure State home for a few years can tell you that fire is just part of life here.
But some seasons are more memorable than others, including the Big Burn of 1910, when more than 3 million acres of Montana and Idaho were torched, destroying towns and killing 85 people.
While nowhere near as large as 1910’s Big Burn, the Yellowstone National Park fires of 1988 gained worldwide attention when 36 percent, or about 793,000 acres, of the park burned in just one season. The 1988 fire seasons was, up until that point, the most expensive wildfire season in American history, with more than $120 million spent to control the blazes.
Fire has also shaped Glacier National Park, particularly in 2003 when 136,000 acres, more than 13 percent of the park, burned in July, August and September.
“The 2003 summer is the pinnacle,” said fire ecologist Dennis Divoky. “2003 was the biggest.”
That summer the National Park Service responded to 26 different wildfires, six of which were larger than 10,000 acres. At different times, the fires forced the evacuation of West Glacier and the Many Glacier and Lake McDonald valleys. No one was hurt but there were certainly close calls. On one night, as fire threatened the Granite Park Chalet, a group of hikers hunkered down but three women decided to escape.
“That evening, we thought we had three fatalities in the park,” Divoky said. “I mean there was no way they could’ve survived.”
No one was ever reported missing and the next day all of the vehicles at The Loop were gone, meaning the three hikers most likely made it out alive.
More than a decade later the scars of that fire season can still be seen inside the park, a clear reminder of this state’s long history with fire.