Fire Control History

The historical background to today’s system of fire control

A summary of the several centuries of fire use prior to the 1900s

BROKEN-LINK BROKEN-LINK Similar to other regions of the country, native people throughout the southeastern US used fire extensively for herding, hunting, forage improvement, pest and disease control, protection from predators, fruit production and increased visibility (Carroll and others 2002).  In the era of European settlement, controlled burning was routine (Pyne 1997).  Settlers used tree boughs, wet sacks, firelines and burnout operations to control surface fires, and unwanted fires were fought with fire (Pyne 1997). In the late 1800s and early 1900s, fires were used routinely in the vast longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests to maintain conditions for turpentine harvest for the naval stores industry.  Frequent, low intensity fires reduced underbrush, which made it easier to tend individual trees nicked for turpentine production and helped to prevent more severe fires from igniting these trees.  As timber harvest in the South increased dramatically to support post-Civil War industrialization, so did the use of fire for slash removal and maintenance of harvested land for grazing.

Wildfires and politics in the early 1900s

By the late 1920s, southern states were experiencing the effects of forest loss and increased wildfires on harvested land.  In Arkansas, for example, an informal survey of forest condition in 1929 revealed that 20 million acres of the state’s remaining 22 million acres of forests had been logged (Gray 2005), 70% of the cutover land had been affected by wildfires, and 11,000 fires burned 2.5 million acres (Gray 2005).

In the early 1900s, President Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, governors of the Western states and private forest protective associations built the foundation of the nation’s fire suppression effort (Davis 1959). Fire control became the leading policy of the young United States Forest Service; the 1911 Weeks Law paved the way for federal-state cooperation in fire control; and the Clarke-McNary Act of 1924 authorized the use of federal funds to build the capacity of state agencies to fight forest fires.  Prescribed burning was banned on many public lands throughout the country.  Public awareness of devastating large-scale fires in the West and the Midwest reinforced public support for systematic fire control (e.g., the Peshtigo, Wisconsin fire of 1871 and the Great Idaho Fire of 1910). In the South, the perception that the annual burning being used on cutover forest land to maintain favorable grazing conditions was preventing reforestation provided a nexus with the Forest Service’s fire control policies.

President Franklin Roosevelt dramatically increased the labor force available for fire control across the nation with the development of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the early 1930s (Davis 1959).  The young men of the CCC built hundreds of fire lookout towers, installed thousands of miles of roads, trails and telephone lines and served on fire lines throughout the nation, including in the South (Carle 2002).  Lookout towers established the foundation for a nationwide forest fire detection system, which is still in use today in parts of the South. 

During the early part of the 20^th century, representatives of the forest industry and private owners of large forest landholdings developed private forest protective associations. These associations provided fire control on private forest lands and later became influential in shaping state and federal roles in fire protection on private lands.  Authority for fire control on state and private lands became vested in state forestry agencies.  Throughout the South these state agencies are still the primary fire control organizations, guided in part by the continued involvement of forest landowners. 

Debates about the role of fire in southern ecosystems

Though not always public, years of debate ensued among forestry officials, academicians and southern landowners about the utility of burning versus fire exclusion in the region.  Much of the debate centered around the longleaf pine ecosystem, which at one time covered 93 million acres in the region (Brockway and others 2002).  Meanwhile, despite these powerful influences in support of fire exclusion, private landowners continued to use fire across the southern landscape. 

As early as 1911, Roland Harper of the Alabama Geological Survey asserted that longleaf pine required fire for its survival (Carle 2002).  Based on his research on longleaf pine in Louisiana, Yale forestry professor Herman H. Chapman argued in a 1912 American Forests article against fire suppression policies being applied to southern forests (Chapman 1912). 

Herbert Stoddard’s research on the role of fire ecology in management of quail on southern pinelands in the early 1930s marked the beginning of fire research in support of scientifically based land management the South. Stoddard was hired to examine the decline in quail populations on a pine plantation owned by Henry Beadel, who had stopped prescribed burning in compliance with federal requests. Stoddard (1931) found that the increase in underbrush that resulted from fire exclusion affected the quail populations. At about the same time, S.W. Greene, a scientist from the Bureau of Animal Husbandry studied forage production at the Coastal Plains Experiment Station in McNeil, Mississippi.  Greene found that cattle gained more weight when grazed on range that had been burned compared to ranges protected from fire.  In 1931 Greene published the information in the controversial article “The Forest that Fire Made” in American Forests magazine (Greene 1931).

According to policy, the Forest Service continued to implement its fire prevention and suppression work throughout the South.  H. N. Wheeler was a traveling Forest Service lecturer and the son of a California preacher.  He traveled throughout the South crusading against forest fire, using Biblical metaphors to imbue the issue with religious significance (Carle 2002). In addition, the American Forestry Association sponsored the Southern Forestry Education Project. Beginning in 1927, the project engaged a team called the “Dixie Crusaders,” which traveled throughout the South distributing literature, visiting schools and showing movies, which were a new and entertaining medium at the time (Carle 2002).  Hosting forest festivals was another tool used to attract the attention of local landowners (Faulkner 2001).

Despite the concerted effort to reform southern burning practices, human caused fires persisted.  In desperation, the Forest Service asked psychologist John Shea to investigate the attitudes of rural southern landowners. By interviewing hundreds of residents of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains, he found that the prevailing view in support of burning was related to local tradition and practices handed down from generation to generation. Shea illustrated his conclusions with this quote, “Woods burnin’’s right.  We allus done it.  Our pappies burned th’ woods an’ their pappies afore ‘em.” (Shea 1940).

Changing forest policy in the mid-1900s

By the early 1940s, challenging fires on public land in the South led to review of its fire policy.  The reconsiderations of fire policies coincided with several seasons of large wildfires, fueled by accumulated vegetative growth.  In 1935, a fire in the Ocala National Forest of Florida burned through crown-fire prone sand pine (Pinus clausa) with astonishing speed. Under the influence of a 45-mile per hour wind, the fire moved 20 miles from a single start in 3 hours before reaching Lake George (Arvanitis and Valavanis 2005).  35,000 acres burned in 4 hours (Florida Division of Emergency Management 2005).  In 1941, 13,000 acres burned in the Impassable Bay fire on the Osceola National Forest.  In 1943 the Mt. Carrie Fire burned 9,000 wildfire acres (Carle 2002). The 30 year long fire debate changed on August 3, 1943, when Chief Forester Lyle Watts authorized controlled burning on National Forests having slash pine (Pinus elliottii) and longleaf pine (Carle 2002).  Federal land managers began re-introducing fire on public lands that year and prescribed burning on federal land continued to gain momentum up through the 1970s and 1980s.  BROKEN-LINK BROKEN-LINK

While prescribed burning increased, wildfires in the droughty 1950s illustrated the need for continued fire suppression (Van Lear and Waldrop 1989).

• In 1950, a record 229,908 acres burned in South Carolina (South Carolina Forestry Commission 2005). 
• In 1952, fires numbering 2,654 burned 728,087 acres in Kentucky (Kentucky Division of Forestry 2005).
• In the fall of 1952, fires in Arkansas burned more than 150,000 acres of timberland (Faulkner 2001). 
• 80% of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge burned in 1954-55 (approximately 234,000 acres according to Trowell 2002), along with thousands of acres of surrounding pine plantations (Line 1999).
• In 1956, the Buckhead fire burned 100,000 acres in the Osceola National Forest in a single day (Florida Division of Emergency Management 2005).