Record Display for the EPA National Library Catalog

RECORD NUMBER: 18 OF 20

Main Title The big burn : Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America /
Author Egan, Timothy,
Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
Year Published 2009
OCLC Number 313658042
ISBN 9780618968411; 0618968415; 9780547394602; 0547394608
Subjects Presidents--United States--Biography ; Conservationists--United States--Biography ; Forest conservation--United States--History ; Nature conservation--United States--History ; National parks and reserves--United States--History ; Forest fires--Montana--History ; Forest fires--Idaho--History ; Waldbrand ; USA--Nordweststaaten ; Conservationists--Biography ; Forest fires--History
Additional Subjects Roosevelt, Theodore,--1858-1919 ; Pinchot, Gifford,--1865-1946 ; United States--National Park Service--History
Internet Access
Description Access URL
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/2009021881-b.html
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/2009021881-d.html
Sample text http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1108/2009021881-s.html
Contributor biographical information http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/2009021881-b.html
Publisher description http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/2009021881-d.html
Holdings
Library Call Number Additional Info Location Last
Modified
Checkout
Status
ESAM  E757.E325 2009 Region 10 Library/Seattle,WA 08/03/2010
Collation x, 324 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
Notes
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-305) and index.
Contents Notes
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.