At the divide of two of the wildest states in America is a vast landscape forged by fire.
The Great Burn is certainly great—over 250,000 acres of rugged Bitterroot mountains, valleys, forests, and streams only an hour from Missoula, Montana.
It’s location makes it the focal point for travel north-south along the Bitterroots, a key place for wolverines and mountain goats. Although no current breeding population exists, the first grizzly bear seen in the Wild Clearwater after their local extirpation was in Kelly Creek in 2007, and the remote area remains ground zero for grizzly recovery in north-central Idaho.
The Great Burn is better known than other roadless areas we advocate for, and its easy to see why. But attention is different than protection, and attempts to reduce the size of the area and allow motorized and mechanized recreation throughout it place the area at risk.
Ultimately, it will take strong wilderness legislation, free from loopholes and exceptions, to protect this vital place.
The Great Burn/Kelly Creek Roadless Area is 255,000 acres of wild country straddling the Montana-Idaho border along the Bitterroot Divide. The divide, much of it above 6,500 feet in elevation, runs north-south for roughly 40 miles.
Over 40 fast-moving streams, large and small, drain down both sides of the ridges, mostly into Kelly Creek on the Idaho side (a tributary of the North Fork Clearwater River) and into Fish Creek on the Montana Side (a tributary of the Clark Fork).
The Great Burn is part of the Clearwater Wildlands Complex. To the west lie the upper North Fork, Moose Mountain, and Weitas Roadless areas. To the south it is bounded by the Lolo Motorway and to the southeast it is encroached by a patchwork of private and public land near US Highway 12. The northeast side is bounded by Montana State Lands, including the nearby Fish Creek State Park.
The Great Burn’s varied topography is characterized by rocky outcroppings, cliffs, and jagged peaks, with elevations that range from 3,200 feet at the mouth of Moose Creek to almost 8,000 feet atop peaks like Rhodes and Williams. The high country features impressive stands of mountain hemlock and dozens of clear lakes nestled in arena-like cirques, with colonies of low mountain heather shrubs dotting the slopes above. The Great Burn region also contains stands of fragrant western red cedars, some over 500 years old, which shelter sensitive plants such as Mingan moonwort, banks monkeyflower, clustered lady's slipper, and Idaho strawberry. Spruce and fir dominate the Montana side; a few whitebark pines can be found above 6,000 feet. Throughout the area, a mossy carpet of sword and maidenhair ferns is rolled out beneath the explorer’s feet. The higher ridges, especially from Williams Peak to Shale Mountain, feature craggy pinnacles and thin, irregular rocky formations often called “dinosaur rocks” for their resemblance to prehistoric creatures or "hoodoos."
Today, the Great Burn area is still favored elk-hunting country. Mule deer and black bear abound, and an estimated 20-50 mountain goats trek the rock-ribbed high country along the Bitterroot Divide. Moose, mountain lions, and many species of fur-bearers make use of this wild area’s exceptional summer range.
In 2007, a hunter killed a grizzly bear in Kelly Creek, mistaking it for a black bear. It was the first confirmed grizzly bear in the Clearwater in more than half a century. Recent research suggests that this area is essential habitat for them, as it is for lynx and several Region 1 sensitive species.
Kelly Creek and all its tributaries have been catch-and-release streams since 1970 to enhance Westslope cutthroat trout populations. Twelve- to fifteen-inch fish are not uncommon, lending national recognition to the drainage. Most of the larger streams and lakes support cutthroat and rainbow trout (steelhead have been landlocked since the construction of Dworshak Reservoir). Fish Lake, threatened by potential off-road vehicle use, is important habitat for bull trout.
Kelly Creek Roadless Area is a critical biological link between the massive Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness to the south and the Greater Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem to the north. Full protection of this regional wildland is essential in order to curb damaging snowmobile and off-road vehicle use on the Idaho side and to prevent speculative mining ventures.
INDIGENOUS HISTORY
An archaeological site in Kelly Creek contains some of the oldest evidence of humans in Idaho, dating back perhaps 12,000 years BP. The site is notable for the presence of artifacts that originated outside of northern Idaho, supporting evidence of large-scale trade networks among Indigenous people throughout the continent.
The Kelly Creek region is located near the edge of traditional Schi̲tsu'umsh (Coeur d'Alene) and Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) traditional territories and has, for the last several hundred years, been important to both of these groups well as the Salish peoples of present-day Montana. At the southern end of the area, the Lolo Trail carries deep cultural and historic significance.
1910 FIRES
Whether called the Great Burn, Great Fires, or Big Blow-Up, the fires of 1910 played a significant role in shaping the region and the history of American forests.
At the time, loggers still relied on handsaws and horses. In northern Idaho, industrial forestry was just beginning, bringing steam donkeys, coal-fired trains, and working men by the thousands to the forests. First on the chopping block were easy-to-reach old-growth forests. The upper Clearwater basin was mountainous, remote, and (at least partly) publicly owned - not the easiest place for timber giants like Weyerhauser and Potlatch to log. Contemporary accounts by the nascent United States Geological Survey and Forest Service describe a landscape of virtually unending green.
However, green expanses don't preclude fire. In 1910, after a record dry spring and blazing summer, lightning strikes started dozens of fires throughout the region, from eastern Washington through Idaho to Western Montana. In August, a windstorm fanned the flames into a firestorm of unimaginable intensity all across the region.
The scale of that fire is difficult to convey due to its sheer size and speed. In just three days, an estimated 3 million acres of forests burned. In comparison, 2018's Camp Fire, which destroyed Paradise, California and burned the Plumas National Forest, claimed about 150,000 acres in two weeks. the Great Burn was thus twenty times as large and burned six times faster.
There are two lasting legacies of the fire, one administrative and one ecological.
Administratively, the fires caused an about-face. Due to the sheer magnitude of the event and the human loss of life, the US Forest Service re-oriented itself from one of protecting forests from exploitation to one of protecting timber resources from fire. The history is well documented in the books Year of the Fires by Stephen Pyne and The Big Burn by Timothy Egan.
Ecologically, the 1910 fires offer us a glimpse into wildfire regimes prior to forestry in the Northern Rockies. The 1910 fires were an extremely rare, natural, weather phenomena, the confluence of high temperatures, low humidity, lightning strikes, and strong winds. Such events may only happen once every thousand years in the Bitterroots, but evidently they occurred prior to logging, prior to fire suppression, and prior to human-caused climate change.
The legacy of the fires reverberates today. Some areas remain treeless, instead persisting as brush fields or expanses of wildflowers. Elk populations ballooned mid-century, in part due to the massive increase in grazing and foraging habitat. Timber production still remains scant in the region due to the loss of old-growth timber in early 20th century fires.
