The Big Burn Film Showing & Hike

In the spring of 1905, the first group of fresh-faced graduates of Yale’s Forestry School began to arrive in the bawdy frontier towns of the West. These first employees of the Forest Service were given the monumental task of managing the newly created national forests in the Northern Rockies. Nothing could have prepared them for the severity of the drought there in 1910. Fires broke out continually and were fought by the rookie rangers as best they could. In mid-August, the particularly destructive fire season hit its peak: in just 36 hours, a firestorm burned more than three million acres and killed at least 78 firefighters, confronting the fledgling U.S. Forest Service with a catastrophe that would define the agency and the nation’s fire policy for much of the twentieth century.

Inspired by Timothy Egan’s best-selling book, The Big Burn provides a cautionary tale of heroism and sacrifice, arrogance and greed, hubris and, ultimately, humility, in the face of nature’s frightening power.

The next day, Sunday, August 20th please join us for a hike along the Pulaski Tunnel Trail in Wallace, ID. This is an easy to moderate 4-mile out and back interpretive trail that traces part of the route Edward Pulaski’s followed during their escape from the 1910 fires. See more detail here https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/ipnf/recarea/?recid=80120.

To join the hike please register here: https://forms.gle/XWLcGHvBwbbmLJiQ9. We will meet in Thompson Falls at 8am to travel to Wallace, ID through the scenic Thompson Pass.

Thank you to our event sponsors: The Rex Theater Project, Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, Kaniksu Land Trust, Wildhorse Plains Backcountry Horsemen, Cube Iron Cataract Coalition, and MSU Extension Sanders County!