Trial by Fire: Early Forest Service Rangers' Fire Stories

Abstract

I n the first three decades of the Forest Service, fire stories were an integral part of the unofficial occupational lives of the "saddle-horse" rangers, "not overcrowded with book learning;' who made up a majority of the the service's work force. Through fire stories these "rough-neck" rangers articulated and consolidated their group attitudes, conceptions, and values as a group. Fire stories served as lightning rods for "old-time, commonsense" rangers' views toward fire, fire policy, heroic fire-suppression efforts, and the division of responsibilities among men in the woods' Perhaps the best-known occupational legend was about Pulaski's heroics during the 1910 Great Burn in northern Idaho and western Montana.