A Northwoods Almanac for 10/1/21

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/1 – 14, 2021  

Anniversary of the Great Peshtigo Fire 

            “Thus sped the days – fearful days – but they brought no relief. The sky was brass. The earth was ashes.” – Frank Tilton, 1871, Sketch of the Great Fires in Wisconsin. 

            America’s deadliest firestorm, the Peshtigo fire, occurred on October 8, 1871, 150 years ago next week. It was the first of many enormous fires that were to ensue over the next 50 years in northern Wisconsin and other areas of the Upper Midwest. Stephen Pyne, author of Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland Rural Fire (1982), wrote “Fires of unprecedented size and intensity rampaged over small villages and towns of moderate size and thereby earned names as historic events. Half a dozen holocausts achieved special notoriety because of damages to property and loss of life. Any one of them could qualify as perhaps the worst fire disaster in American experience. The fires were the product of a particular set of conditions: wholesale logging, which made the Lake States from 1880 to 1900 the chief source of timber and an unrivaled tinderbox of abandoned slash; farmers looking for cheap, easily cleared land and not adverse to using fire for landclearing, and railroads, whose transportation potential made both logging and farming economically feasible, and whose brakes and smokestacks were a frequent source of ignition.” 

These massive fires occurred throughout the Upper Midwest, and despite the variation in names, dates, and locations, they mimicked one another closely enough to offer a single blackened story. Only with the exhaustion of virgin timber, the abandonment of agricultural settlement, and the statewide commitment to fire control did the fires cease in the 1930s. Here’s a sampling of the fires of that era:

            1871: “The Black Year” (Pyne) saw fires burning simultaneously in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota, culminating in the Peshtigo Fire, which eclipsed all other fires of the era. Of Peshtigo’s 2,000 residents, over 1,800 died, though many sources estimate that the number throughout the region totaled 2,500.

            1886: “The forest fires which are now raging in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan promise a repetition of the calamity which happened 15 years ago . . . North of Wausau and Phillips the fires are reported as very fierce, and the cities are so enveloped in smoke that it is dark at midday. On the south between Wausau and Mosinee the woods are one sheet of flames. In the pine forest north, the fires have damaged the timber to a great extent . . . Reports from Colby say that the town will be burned tomorrow unless the wind changes. Marquette, MI, on the shore of Lake Superior is afire tonight.” (New York Times)

            1889: “Furious forest fires are raging in northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, and an immense amount of damage has been done. For miles on three sides of Duluth the fire rages . . . On the Hermantown road, near Duluth, every dwelling for four miles has been destroyed . . . South of Ashland for 150 miles the forests are ablaze . . . Cumberland, WI, is almost wholly surrounded by fire . . . North of Grantsburg, WI, the fire has swept the country, destroying everything in its path.” (Bridgeport, Connecticut Morning News)

            1893: “The towns of Virginia and Iron Mountain in Michigan have been destroyed by forests fires . . . There are 2,000 people homeless in Virginia . . . Women and children are housed in box cars, but have nothing to eat and no engine to move them. Forest fires are raging all through northern Wisconsin and Michigan . . . It is likely to burn millions of feet of standing pine. Only a year ago Iron River was entirely destroyed by fire.” (The Columbian)

            1894: The Minnesota (Hinkley), Wisconsin (Phillips), and Michigan fires occurred this year. In the Hinckley fire, 126 people took refuge in a marsh, and then the fire converted the sedges into a crematorium. In the Phillips fire, the city of 2500 persons lay in ruins. More than 400 homes, the business district, a new tannery and the large sawmill were totally destroyed. Thirteen lives were lost, all in attempts to escape the flames by crossing the lake.

            1896: “Big Mills and Lumber Burn at Ashland. Estimated Property Loss Is Half a Million Dollars. Workingmen Driven by Heat Jump Into the Lake. One of the most destructive fires in the history of Northern Wisconsin . . .” (Chicago Tribune)

            1898: Filibert Roth in his report on “The Forestry Conditions of Northern Wisconsin” wrote, “During forty years of lumbering nearly the entire territory has been logged over . . . In addition to this, the fires, following all logging operations or starting on new clearings of the settler, have done much to change these woods. Nearly half of this territory has been burned over at least once, about three million acres are without any forest cover whatever, and several million more are but partly covered by the dead and dying remnants of the former forest.”

fire twisting a railroad track

            1906: “Serious fires are sweeping three sections of Wisconsin and upper Michigan. A track 30 miles square has been swept by forest fires near Escanaba, Mich. . . . The city of Stanley, a town of 5,000 in Chippewa county, is reported to be in flames. The village of Auburndale, Wood county was swept by fire . . . The forest fire is sweeping four counties in northern Wisconsin. The area embraces 200 square miles.” (The Middletown News)

            1908: “Only Ash Heaps Are Left . . . Forest fires which have been burning for three days closed on several towns and small settlement near Duluth this afternoon, wiping them out . . . Chisholm, MN, a town of 4,000 people on the Mesaba Iron Range ninety miles north of Duluth is completely wiped out. Hibbing, five miles from Chisholm is surrounded by forest fires tonight . . . The entire northern portion of Douglas county, WI, is on fire . . .” (The Telegraph-Herald)

            1910: Baudette, MN fire: There were apparently four main fires to start with, which then grew, merged and raced quickly towards the towns in the area. The settlements burned in less than two hours . . . By the end of the day the villages of Cedar Spur, Graceton, Pitt, Baudette and Spooner lay in ruins. Four hundred thousand acres were blackened. Homesteads across the county were destroyed and 43 lives were lost. 

            1911: The Au Sable, Michigan fire is considered the most devastating fire in the history of Michigan. The neighboring cities of Oscoda and Au Sable burned to the ground. A sudden fifty mile-per-hour wind swept the fire into Au Sable. Meanwhile, one mile west of Oscoda, a passing locomotive threw sparks which ignited, spread quickly, and swept across a river valley destroying over three-fourths of the city of Oscoda. 

            1918: “With a toll of probably 500 persons dead, thousands homeless and without clothing, and property damage amounting far into millions of dollars, whole sections of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota timber land tonight are smoldering, fire stricken wastes, with the charred ruins of abandoned towns to accentuate the general desolation.” In the Cloquet, MN, fire alone, 453 died. “The scene at the station was indescribable. There came a rush of wind and the entire town was in flames. The trains pulled out with the fires blazing closely behind them . . . The flames licked at the cars. Windows in the coaches were broken by the heat.” (New York Times)

            Remarkably, despite all their ruination, land-clearing fires furnished instant progress toward the pastoral dream. A homesteader had five years to “improve” his land in order to meet the conditions of the Homestead Law, and the forest was in his way. The eternal smoke riding on the wind conjured the smell of an advancing culture. One writer said, “Fire was the necessary investment required to pay a future interest.” 

Thus, on the whole, the fires were lauded, invoking what some referred to as the Holocaust Era, The Great Barbecue (Pyne), or The Dragon Devastation (Gifford Pinchot).

The fires were often spun by boosters as positive, even those that killed hundreds, because a constant influx of settlers was needed to feed the intended transformation from forest to farm. 

The Detroit Post saw the 1881 fires as: [a] “chance for new settlers . . . where the fires have raged, the forests have been killed, the underbrush burned and the ground pretty effectively cleared. There are square miles and whole townships where the earth is bare of everything except a light covering of ashes; and other square miles where all that is needed to complete the clearing is to gather up a few scattered chunks per acre and finish burning them.             

“These lands are now in such a condition that they are all ready for seeding to whet, merely requiring the harrow to be used upon them, in case there is not time to plow. The rich salts of the former vegetation are preserved in their ashes . . . The trees, the underbrush, and all the impediments to agriculture, it usually costs so much in toil for the pioneer to remove, have been swept away, and the rich land lies open and ready cleared for the settler . . . 

“There are other great advantages too. The insects and forest pests of the farmer are nearly all extinct. There will be no potato bugs, no weevils, or army worms, no curculio, very few birds or squirrels for several years to come on these lands . . . There can be no more fires, because there are no more brush or swamps to burn.”

The local chamber of commerce could not have spun the story into a better promotion. Devastation by fire became a highest good – a bright road to prosperity.

The holocaust fires had very different effects from those prehistorically since their intensity was heightened by the accumulation of so much fuel left on the ground. They radically changed the forest biological communities because of the removal of the conifer seed trees. After the fires, huge areas became covered with pin cherry, aspen and white birch rather than young pines.

With unintended but unmistakable irony, the lumber industry argued they had no choice but to cut as fast as possible because of the danger of fire: “Pine must be cut speedily to save it from being destroyed by forest fires. It is a question whether this valuable timber shall be saved to be used for the convenience of human beings, or be wasted by destructive forest fires. If it is to be saved, it must be cut as fast as possible.” (Detroit Post in 1881 discussing a piece in “The Lumberman’s Gazette”)

It was a positive feedback loop – the more the forest was cut, the more farmers came in, the more fires were set to clear the land, the greater the hazard then of holocaust fires, and thus the more the forests needed to be cut before they were burned.

The fires often devastated the topsoil. On sandy soils, the fires could completely consume the organic soil. “In some places many feet of organic matter were stripped off, leaving only barren stretches of sand or rock. Such fires did not benignly recycle nutrients; they irreversibly vaporized them.” (Pyne) 

Stumpland and soil erosion - Wisconsin Historical Society

The fires blazed well into the early 1900s. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forest continued to burn throughout the Upper Midwest, and smoke often closed the Great Lakes to navigation. In 1925, 1.4 million acres in WI, MI, and MN burned. The fires continued into the early 1930s during the drought years, but by 1936 with the coming of rains, the CCC, the acceptance of forestry on state and county lands, and a host of laws that were finally being enforced, the massive fires were over.

Botanist John Curtis wrote, “The desolation of much of the pine area in the 1920’s and early 1930’s is difficult to describe to anyone who did not see it. In many places the entire landscape as far as the eye could see supported not a single tree more than a few inches in diameter. Only the gaunt stumps of the former pines, frequently with their root systems fully exposed as a result of the consumption of the topsoil by fire, remained to indicate that the area was once a forest rather than a perpetual barrens.”

            

Sightings – Moose!

            On 9/18, Mary and Stu Guenther sent me this note along with several photographs of a young bull moose: “Driving to church this morning turned out to be anything but ordinary! My husband spotted this amazing animal in a farmer’s field on Blue Lake Rd. near the Tomahawk River. We couldn’t believe our eyes! It was thrilling to us!”

photo by Mary and Stu Guenther

            Young bull moose occasionally wander our way from northeastern Minnesota and the western U.P. of Michigan, going on “walk-abouts” that sometimes cover hundreds of miles.

            Minnesota’s moose has been relatively stable for nine years, but suffered a decade-long steep decline in the early 2000s. The state has the largest population with about 3,150 animals; however, that’s still down more than 50% since 2006.

            The most recent biennial survey conducted in the U.P.in early 2019 counted 509 moose. 

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in October, look after dusk for Venus low in the southwest, Jupiter in the south-southeast, and Saturn in the south. On 10/9, look for Venus 3° below the waxing crescent moon. On 10/13, Saturn will be 4° above the moon.

 

Thought for the Week          

            “If you quiet your mind, then you actually get to see what else there is around you besides yourself.” – Greta Ehrlich