I have missed writing the last five days because I was called out on a forest fire on Lincoln Lake and was gone over a hundred hours. I have worked over 70 hours since I have left camp and fought fire for five days and nights in succession and sleeping in the trails and on the bare ground and then only a couple hours at the time. Out of the whole 5 days and nights I was gone I got less than fifteen hours sleep. The whole thing seems like a horrible night mare. Climbing up one side of a mountain and going down another. I got so tired sometimes that I just fell on the trail we were working and slept for a couple of hours.
Friday night we fought and had the fire under control and then we were just started resting and she blazed anew and jumped the trails and started burning up in the tops. A smog fell and knocked out one kid. Three of four time fellows were trapped in the flames and we cut in and got them out in the nick of time. Some of the fellows were scared to death but it is an old game for me as I fought fires in Calif., Wisc, and Oregon and I know what it is all about. 120 acres of timber burnt before we really had it under control and there were quite a few casualties at the fire. There were three c.c.c. camps working on the fire. I was so tired when I got back to camp that I just flopped on my bed and slept twenty hours only once waking up to take a drink of water and fell right back to sleep. Everybody in the company is in bed right now and I am going to go to the same place.
Friday night we fought and had the fire under control and then we were just started resting and she blazed anew and jumped the trails and started burning up in the tops. A smog fell and knocked out one kid. Three of four time fellows were trapped in the flames and we cut in and got them out in the nick of time. Some of the fellows were scared to death but it is an old game for me as I fought fires in Calif., Wisc, and Oregon and I know what it is all about. 120 acres of timber burnt before we really had it under control and there were quite a few casualties at the fire. There were three c.c.c. camps working on the fire. I was so tired when I got back to camp that I just flopped on my bed and slept twenty hours only once waking up to take a drink of water and fell right back to sleep. Everybody in the company is in bed right now and I am going to go to the same place.
Robert
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Comments From Chris -
I've seen some large wildfires in California, but reading this really brought home how tough it could be out there trying to stop one. It gives me a lot of respect for the guys that get out and fight to reduce damage and put these out.
Fires can and have been devastating to the park. Thousands of acres can burn at a time destroying any vegetation and structures. One of the functions of the CCC camps was fire prevention and suppression, which Robert spent a lot of time working on.
In 1936 the weather was unusually dry and warm making conditions right for wildfire. You've heard Robert mention there were many tourists in the park now increasing not only the chance of fire, but the chance for damages. This was not a good year to have a fire.
Robert would most likely have a different memory of this area, but it looks like a beautiful place to me. Check out the photos below.
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| Lincoln Lake not marked. It's next to L. Ellen Wilson Robert's 1936 Glacier National Park Map |
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| Lincoln Lake is the small one From Google Maps |
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| Beaver Chief Falls flowing in to Lincoln Lake By Glacier National Park (Flickr: Beaver Chief Falls) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] |
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