Egan, Timothy
Big Burn Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America The Big Burn Timothy Egan - Boston Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009 - x, 324 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates illustrations, map 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-305) and index.
Prologue: A fire at the end of the world -- In on the creation. "A peculiar intimacy" ; Roost of the robber barons ; The Great Crusade ; Deadwood days ; Showdown -- What they lost. Summer of smoke ; Men, men, men! ; Spaghetti Westerners ; Firestorm's eve ; Blowup ; The lost day ; The lost night ; Towns afire ; To save a town ; The missing ; The living and the dead -- What they saved. Fallout ; One for the boys ; Ashes. Part I. Part II. Part III.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Equally dramatic is the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot's rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected -- or not -- today.
9780547394602 0547394608
2009021881
015479946 Uk
Roosevelt, Theodore 1858-1919
Pinchot, Gifford 1865-1946
United States National Park Service --History
Presidents--United States--Biography
Conservationists--United States--Biography
Forest conservation--History--United States
Nature conservation--History--United States
National parks and reserves--History--United States
Forest fires--History--Montana
Forest fires--History--Idaho
National parks
Idaho
Montana
USA
E757 / .E325 2009
973.911 Ega 15
E757 / .E325 2009
973.911 E28b
Big Burn Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America The Big Burn Timothy Egan - Boston Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009 - x, 324 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates illustrations, map 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-305) and index.
Prologue: A fire at the end of the world -- In on the creation. "A peculiar intimacy" ; Roost of the robber barons ; The Great Crusade ; Deadwood days ; Showdown -- What they lost. Summer of smoke ; Men, men, men! ; Spaghetti Westerners ; Firestorm's eve ; Blowup ; The lost day ; The lost night ; Towns afire ; To save a town ; The missing ; The living and the dead -- What they saved. Fallout ; One for the boys ; Ashes. Part I. Part II. Part III.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Equally dramatic is the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot's rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected -- or not -- today.
9780547394602 0547394608
2009021881
015479946 Uk
Roosevelt, Theodore 1858-1919
Pinchot, Gifford 1865-1946
United States National Park Service --History
Presidents--United States--Biography
Conservationists--United States--Biography
Forest conservation--History--United States
Nature conservation--History--United States
National parks and reserves--History--United States
Forest fires--History--Montana
Forest fires--History--Idaho
National parks
Idaho
Montana
USA
E757 / .E325 2009
973.911 Ega 15
E757 / .E325 2009
973.911 E28b