Prarie Fires: A Dramatic Love-Hate History

By Ellen and Paul Bonnifield

With tension growing between Utes and Whites during the summer of 1879, Colorow and a few followers stopped at Albert and Lou Smart’s home in Hayden. (Smarts were the founders of Hayden.) After terrifying Lou and her three children, they rode a short distance up valley where they stopped and “set-out fire” (started a grass fire).

Often the afternoon wind blows up valley and the fire raced through the grass. In the evening the wind changes and the fire burned south. At sunrise the wind again changed, driving the fire down valley toward Hayden and the homes of Smart and Thompson. The husbands being away, Eliza Thompson and Lou were left to defend their homes and save the children. Eliza had five and Lou had three. The women and children worked hard and fast to move everything to safety near the river. By late in the afternoon a raging fire headed directly at them. Lou was sure all was lost. The wind following its daily pattern once again changed and blew up the valley taking the fire with it until it crossed the river and burned toward Pilot Knob. Later that summer a second fire threatened Hayden. This time Lou’s husband Albert was home and other men were nearby. Quickly the fire was controlled and forced to the river where it died.

Founder of the RockyMountainNewsand enthusiastic promoter of developing northwestern Colorado, William Byers was returning to Hot Sulphur Springs in the summer of 1877 when he visited Ute Chief Colorow’s camp south of Steamboat Springs. The entire Mesa was ablaze. Byers asked Colorow why he had set the fires. The answer was simple and direct: “To make grass for the horses.” Two years later James B. Thompson was traveling north along the White River Indian Agency Road between White River and Rawlins, Wyoming, when he stopped to camp. All the grass was burned off the usual camping area. He asked a Ute why they had set the fires. The Indian’s answer was the same. “Make grass for the horses.” Arriving at the western edge of Gore Pass in 1862, Lt. Berthoud and his railroad-wagon road survey discovered a beautiful meadow of grass – some so tall and thick horses had difficulty walking through it. For the next two decades Egeria Park, the area from Toponas to Oak Creek, held a magical image. The Indians kept the sage brush and buck brush away with fire. When Charley Baggs staked his ranch on the Little Snake River in the early 1870s, it was a sea of grass.

On the 29th of September in 1879, Major Thornburgh, leading his force of two calvary companies, a detachment of foot soldiers, and a large supply train pulled by oxen, started across Milk Creek setting off the Battle at Milk Creek and the Ute War of 1879. Thornburgh was killed early in the battle and the leading companies were forced to withdraw to the circling wagons.

Using fire as a weapon of war, the Ute quickly set grass fires burning toward the circling troops. Attempting to start backfires the army received heavy losses. The backfire failed and burned the ox train. The Ute were beaten off and the troops pinned down. Indian Agent Meeker and all white men at the Agency were killed, the three women and three children were taken hostage. On October 5th, a relief column arrived and the Ute were forced to retreat. As they went, they set fires depriving the army of grass for their horses.

In the mid-1930s David Morgan was interviewed as part of a New Deal project. Morgan first came to the Yampa Valley and Little Snake River in the early 1870s delivering supplies to the White River Indian Agency. Morgan told the interviewer, “Enormous change occurred over the years.” Sagebrush and buck brush had replaced the vast grassland.

One of the most dramatic legends of prairie fire occurred during the Great Prairie Fire of 1762-63. Young Sioux were racing for the river as their village burned. The fire over took them. Covering themselves with their blankets, they fell on the ground. The fire burned over them, but miraculously the boys survived with only their right hip burned. Their survival awed other Indians. Soon they and their people were called Sican-zhu, the “people with burned hips.” The French traders called them “Brule” a major Lakota–Sioux sub-tribe.

Early pioneers were often awed by prairie fires. Accompanying an inexperienced party of men across the great plains in 1833, John Irving had camped for the night. Sparks from a camp fire escaped setting the grass afire. “In an instant fifty little fires shot their forked tongues in the air,” he wrote. The men were astounded as the “wind hurled the burning grass into the air. The fire grew and swept across the prairie . . . leap succeeded leap.” Fortunately, the fire moved away and left them safe. In the morning Irving wrote “the sun had set upon a prairie still clothed in its natural garb of herbage. It rose upon a scene of desolation.”

Another party was camping for the night when the air became thick with smoke. They climbed a nearby hill where “a spectacle presented itself to us most grand that can well be conceived. The fire was about four miles away and across the horizon.” The party narrowly escaped by successfully setting a back fire; however, the observer thought the approaching fire was “magnificent.”

Paul Wilhelm, 1820's, wrote, “it was truly horrifying but at the same time a magnificent sight as we drifted along in the middle of the river and watched the banks of the giant Missouri as it appeared for miles in a sea of flames. At night the spectacle defied description.”

Often prairie fires were huge. The XIT Ranch (the largest privately owned ranch in American history) stretched along the Texas-New Mexico border and contained more than three million acres. In 1894, a fire blew out of New Mexico with a twenty-mile front south of Farwell. The XIT section that burned was twenty miles wide and sixty miles long. The fire burned much more in New Mexico.

In 1895, a fire started near the Arkansas River in Colorado-Kansas burned south, jumped the Cimarron River, crossed the Oklahoma Panhandle, burned all the grass on 470,000 acres of the Buffalo Springs division of the XIT, and burned deep into the Texas Panhandle.

In 1864, the Cheyenne Indians attacked Julesburg, Colorado, and raided several stagecoach stations. The Commander of the Nebraska District, General Mitchell, sent troops in pursuit but failed to catch the raiders. In frustration, he ordered all military posts, ranches, and stage stations to set fires from Fort Kearney to Denver. According to Eugene F. Ware who was stationed at Fort Cottonwood (later Fort McPherson), on the evening of January 27, 1865, fires were set along the entire 300-mile front.

For those who live here and for those who wish they did.

Three days later the massive fire crossed the Arkansas River and continued into the Texas Panhandle. Despite the reported size of the fire, it had little or no impact on the Cheyenne. For them it was just another fire that would make good grass for the ponies. The size and pattern of the fire are not well documented although Ware’s report of the fire is recorded.

Following the Civil War, thousands of homesteaders rushed onto the Great Plains – the Sod House Frontier. On the treeless plains, homestead houses were built with sod. To build a roof, poles were laid and straw placed atop, making a thatched roof – easily fired. Many pioneer families lost their lives while “seeking shelter in sod houses.” Most homesteaders soon “starved out” and returned east. For those who remained, prairie fires were always a concern. Referring to the fires’ frequency, speed, and destruction, the phrase “Like a Prairie Fire” became common usage and was widely understood.

Vera Williams, a child in 1900, lived with her sister, mother, and father in an old sod-house in the Nebraska sand hills. Many years later, Vera recalled a neighbor telling Papa, “We haven’t had a fire close to here for a long time, but that doesn’t mean we won’t. You’d better finish that firebreak.” Papa didn’t. (It was common for homesteaders to plow a fire line around the farmstead.)

A few weeks later a fire broke out and ranchers from far and near hurried to fight the fire with wet gunny sacks. Men would string out with gunny sacks dipped in a barrel of water and move along the flank of the fire beating it out. Back fires were also often used. Papa rushed to the fire line, and late that evening he returned home. This was repeated for several days. As he prepared to leave one morning mama said, “I have a cold spot in the pit of my stomach, and every time you start out again, that cold spot travels all over me. We won’t have any protection if a fire heads this way.” Papa in white faced rage wheeled on Mama. “There isn’t a fire within twenty miles of this ranch. . . . If you want it turned (fire break), you’ll have to turn it yourself.” Mama was very much aware of the stories of families roasted in their homestead sod houses.

Mama caught two horses -- one old and almost blind and the other untrained to work. She plowed a big and wide firebreak around all the buildings. The fire wasn’t twenty miles away, and it was approaching fast. Next, she took the two children, who were clinging to each other, to the windmill and filled tubs of water and hauled them to the house and placed them in the center of the floor. Blankets were stripped from the beds, soaked, and draped over the children. Mama’s fire line held and the fire burned around them before moving on. Verna recalled, “we had a can of tomatoes for supper to celebrate.”

March 2, 1904, was very cold and the wind strong in Sherman County Nebraska when a large prairie fire raced across the plains. Men with wet sacks rushed to control it. It was so cold that several hands were frozen to the sacks, and faces were frozen on the side away from the fire. Eventually it burned a strip four miles wide and twelve miles long, destroying several buildings, hay and straw stacks, fences, farm wagons, and equipment. No lives were lost.

In 1886, Russell Seymour, his wife and two children were awakened by the roar of a deadly fire. Russell hurried to build back fires without success. He and the family were trapped and appeared doomed when a violent hail storm charged over the fire killing it.

A large fire in 1903 threatened Eleanor Penny’s home. Her father and nine children, even the small ones and the women and girls fought the fire. Neighbors soon arrived and saved the farmstead and livestock. After the fire was controlled, Eleanor’s mother and girls cooked potatoes, fried pork, made gravy and biscuits for the neighboring firefighters. When the fire was completely out and the livestock safe, about 10 p.m., the family sat down to a supper of pancakes and syrup.

One 1879 pioneer commented, “The country was new and there were wide stretches of unbroken prairie . . . fires were frequent, often several were in view at one time.” There are hundreds of personal accounts without any accurate accounting of the number of human deaths or serious injuries; however, it was high especially among women and children. The long skirts and long hair of women, who sought safety inside sod houses, often cost them their lives. The suffering and death of animals, domestic and wild, was horrendous. One account tells of jack rabbits running with their hair on fire. Others described the painful sound of dying animals.

Deadly prairie fires are not confined to the pioneering days of the American West. Prairie states report hundreds, often thousands, of grass fires each year. All of them have dramatic and often tragic stories.

On March 6, 2017, the Northwest Complex Fire erupted with multiple fires in the same region. The area burned by the complex was over 600,000 acres. That season more than two million total acres burned on the south-central Great Plains. The most famous fire of the complex is the Starbuck Fire.

On the “Dry Line,” where extreme weather hangs out, near Slapout, Oklahoma, a power line broke during a ferocious wind storm at the Mocane oil field. Charlie Starbuck and his volunteer fire crew was called. Arriving at the fire, it was clear their three trucks were not enough. The wind was high with gusts reaching near one hundred miles per hour. This fire was on the run. Help was called in, and Texas County, Oklahoma, responded immediately. But they were miles away and this fire was not waiting.

At Ashland, Kansas, fifty miles away, Millie Fudge, Clark County’s head of emergency management got the call. Soon she was heading south with three units. As she approached Englewood, Kansas, she learned the fire was approaching her faster than she was approaching the fire, and the fire was about to flank her.

The Englewood firemen advised her to return to Ashland and make a stand. Seeing the Ashland units race away, the Englewood firemen realized they were all alone. No help was coming. Englewood’s fire chief Bernnie Smith’s problems only worsened. A fire truck ran over a hydrant and broke it. The broken hydrant drained the town water tank.

The electric power was off and he could not pump water from the wells. His wife was about to die of a smoke induced asthma attack. His daughter was desperately seeking medical help for her mother. Both were out there somewhere in the fire. Different fires kept blocking their path. After several attempts in Oklahoma and Texas the women finally found help at Liberal, Kansas.

Driving with both windows open to feel the same heat the men in the back felt, Starbuck suddenly saw and felt flames race through the cab. They were surrounded and about to be overrun. With hoses working, they raced to safety. “I’m amazed” Starbuck said, “we didn’t end up going to a lot of firefighters’ funerals.” He was close to attending his own.

At Ashland, a battle royal was in the making. Mike Harden, a farmer, began disc plowing a fire line around the town. He remained at it until he was ploughing grass fire. He could do no more. Driven by the wind, burning tumble weeds and grass filled the air. The air was literally on fire.

Firemen saved Garth Gardiner’s home while theirs burned. A four-hundred-acre green wheat field at the edge of town helped stop the fire from entering Ashland; however, everyone was evacuated. Flames raced across the road ahead of the last to go.

Seven people lost their lives that day, millions of dollars in property was damaged, and the number of animals that died was enormous. The scars, both human and physical, remain. But there was no shortage of heroes who gave all they had to give. The prairies remain the domain of the prairie fire.

Poetry

The Poet's Bucket List

By Fran Conlon

A poet might have a bucket list, Things to do before the final storm, Affirming life while he (or she) still exists, A perfect verse meeting every norm.

Critics cheer this universal aim, Past sages have had their turn, With missives' lofty aesthetic claim, A truth inscription for the poet's urn.

Ages hence would sing the verse, So inspired from the subtle muse, A creative spirit shared, but not perverse, Such envy a mind might so choose.

O’er flowing the bucket of adulatory praise, With ethereal words that know no end, The bucket kicked me into a daze, But, perfection I might suspend.

Enshrine the verse with laurels, Am I helped with such pearls?