Great Fire of 1910

A pine forest on the Little North Fork of the St. Joe River, Idaho, after the fire
Date(s)	August 20–21, 1910
Location	Idaho, Montana, and Washington, United States British Columbia, Canada
Statistics
Burned area	3,000,000 acres (4,700 sq mi; 12,100 km2)
Land use	Logging, mining, railroads
Impacts
Deaths	87
Non-fatal injuries	Unknown
Damage	Unknown
Ignition
Cause	Not officially determined

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Location in the United States

Perimeter of Great Fire of 1910 (map data)

The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, or the Devil's Broom fire) was a wildfire in the Inland Northwest region of the United States that in the summer of 1910 burned three million acres (4,700 sq mi; 12,100 km², approximately the size of Connecticut) in North Idaho and Western Montana, with extensions into Eastern Washington and Southeast British Columbia.^[1] The area burned included large parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests.^[2] The fire burned over two days on the weekend of August 20–21,^[3][4] after strong winds caused numerous smaller fires to combine into a firestorm of unprecedented size. It killed 87 people,^[5] mostly firefighters,^[6][7] destroyed numerous manmade structures, including several entire towns, and burned more than three million acres of forest with an estimated billion dollars' worth of timber lost.^[2] While the exact cause of the fire is often debated, according to various U.S. Forest Service sources, the primary cause of the Big Burn was a combination of severe drought and a series of lightning storms that ignited hundreds of small fires across the Northern Rockies. However, the ignition sources also include human activity such as railroads, homesteaders, and loggers.^[8] It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history.^[9][10]

In the aftermath of the fire, the U.S. Forest Service received considerable recognition for its firefighting efforts, including a doubling of its budget from Congress. The outcome was to highlight firefighters as public heroes while raising public awareness of national nature conservation. The fire is often considered a significant impetus in the development of early wildfire prevention and suppression strategies.^[2]