Private Fires, Public Lands: Cooperation and Acceptance between Private Forestry Organizations and the Forest Service, 1911–34

In July 1910, an electrical storm in Northern Idaho sparked one of the largest fires in American history. Burning over three million acres across Idaho, Washington, and Montana, the fire also claimed the lives of eighty-five firefighters, many of whom were untrained volunteers. In the wake of the fire, public and political consensus grew around the necessity of building stronger fire protection programs. In 1911 Congress passed the Weeks Act, empowering the U.S. Forest Service to purchase lands for National Forests, bringing them under Federal protection. At the same time, timbered landowners, state officials, and federal officials formed myriad private forestry associations across western states that offered fire protection to private timberland holders.

The early history of the Forest Service has been well studied, but the role of the private sector in the history of forest protection programs and policies has not. In the early twentieth century, withdrawing public forests into the National Forest aroused widespread opposition in the west. In this poster I focus on the role of one private forestry organization, the Northern Montana Forestry Association (NMFA), in shifting public opinion of the Forest Service. I use public and archival sources, including regional newspapers, Forest Service and NMFA planning documents, and correspondence between NMFA members to argue that the establishment of cooperative fire management policies between the NMFA and the Forest Service precipitated public acceptance of the Forest Service in Montana.

The NMFA was formed in 1911 and provided fire protection to timbered landholders in Northwestern Montana. Association members relied on logging for income, and several members penned newspaper articles impugning the Forest Service for withdrawing prime timbered lands from public purchase in the early 1910s. However, many members’ properties bordered Forest Service lands. To prevent wildfires from spreading between public and private lands, the NMFA negotiated a cooperative fire management program with the Forest Service in 1911. From 1911 to 1935, the Forest Service provided an increasing share of infrastructure to the cooperative fire management plan, including a greater number of fire patrolmen and fire watchtowers. By the 1930s, Association members had accepted that their lands were substantially protected by the Forest Service.

This poster maps the expansion of cooperative efforts between the NMFA and the Forest Service from 1911 to 1935 in relation to key Association members’ properties. I map cooperative efforts, such as fire patrolmen ranges and fire lookout locations, between the NMFA and at four key years: 1911, the year of the NMFA’s establishment; 1917, when the range of cooperative management expanded to lands bordering three more National Forests; 1924, when the NMFA began to use Forest Service lookouts; and 1935, when the Forest Service nationally adopted a strict fire suppression program. Each map highlights the location of several Association members’ properties along with correspondence or articles they wrote in that year demonstrating their opinion of the Forest Service. These maps illustrate an expanding geography of cooperation between the NMFA and the Forest Service and an increased geography of acceptance of the Forest Service.