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

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009) tells the true story of the Great Fire of 1910, which burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana, Washington, and British Columbia, and is believed to be the largest wildfire in United States history. Authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Timothy Egan, the book describes the newly created United States Forest Service effort to stop the fire and details President Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation battles with Congress. With his head forester Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt envisioned an America that appreciated its wild lands for their beauty and intrinsic worth. Egan’s book is a retelling of the United States’ first active efforts to protect these lands.

The Prologue begins as the fire reaches Wallace, Idaho, on August 20, 1910. Extreme wind combines thousands of small wildfires into an immense blaze. Rangers in the forest service battle the fire and recruit anyone willing to help. Most of these firefighters are inexperienced; they are immigrants, local miners, timber workers, railroad workers, out-of-work journeymen, homesteaders, Buffalo Soldiers sent by President Taft, and even prisoners.

Egan describes Roosevelt’s presidency and his conservationist agenda, enacted with his confidant and fellow conservationist Gifford Pinchot.