Elers Koch: Early Architect of USFS Firefighting Mission; Early Prophet of Mission Failure

In 2023 when megafires erupt across North America, and our national forests seem trapped in an escalating yet faltering war on wildfire, it might be good to look back on history and see how we got here. How did firefighting on public lands get started? What was US Forest Service firefighting like back in 1905 or 1920? How are those roots relevant today?

At the beginning of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt finished forming the system of national forests that his predecessors had started in the 1890s. Taking vast swaths of mountain country that had been part of the "public domain" after Americans took it from Native people by force and other means, the Forest Reserve system transformed into the National Forests under the direction of Gifford Pinchot, an eastern forester who understood that these lands should belong to all Americans and not just the often-corrupt timber companies or the elites.

One of the people Pinchot hired to form the Forest Service out in the northern Rockies' wilds was Elers Koch. Koch traveled all over Idaho and Montana, mapping boundaries for the national forests in some of America's wildest and most remote country. He traveled on horseback, snowshoes, and foot. Koch traveled with Indigenous companions, encountered grizzly bears and wildfires, and chose places for log cabin ranger stations deep in the backcountry. He understood the beauty and value of Montana in its wild state, its condition when Native people still moved freely among its peaks and plains.

Koch was a government pioneer and an eloquent writer whose book "Forty Years a Forester" is a must-read for anyone interested in the birth of our national forests and the beginnings of firefighting in the West. For Koch, fire was a central focus of his career.

Least we imagine that big, wide-ranging, high-severity fires are purely a product of a century of mismanagement of our national forests; Koch's stories tell otherwise. He and a small group of rangers fought lightning fires that burned over multiple watersheds as fires had for millions of years before firefighting began. Koch describes largely futile and pointless firefighting before logging or livestock grazing ruined the wild nature of Montana’s mountains. 

He recalls the Hemlock Creek Fire in the Clearwater National Forest in the 1920s. Lightning started a fire in a big stand of dead timber with down logs scattered miles in every direction. These forests were hungry for inevitable fire, yet the new Forest Service felt obligated to stop the fire. After all, the conventional wisdom that fire is terrible was already baked into the Forest Service playbook, even when the agency was still forming its ideas. Koch describes the monumental battle among falling snags when no roads were near, no aircraft brought water or slurry, and a few tired people attacked tens of thousands of acres of fire with hand tools.

Compared to the national organization and technology we fight fire with today, it defies the imagination to think of a few people fighting fires that were 10,000 acres or more. Yet they often succeeded because they knew the landscape and the basics of anchoring and cutting off fire heads with geographic features and well-placed hand lines. 

Koch remembers 170-foot-tall white pine snags burning and showering sparks into the high wind. He recalls these giant trees thundering down on the fire line, sending firefighters running for their lives before the snags slid into the canyon, starting new fire far below. He recalls being trapped by fast-moving fire with a few horses and other rangers, cowering by a river as the fire raged past. They survived by covering the horses and themselves in wet blankets and lying in the river. 

When the fire was over, they had to walk out for miles over fallen blackened trees to some remote ranger station that may or may not have burned. 

Koch, who lived from 1880 until 1954, devoted his life to the Forest Service and watched it evolve from a tiny organization into a national bureaucracy. Nothing drew his attention the way fire did, and in his last years, he reflected on firefighting in the West. He said:

“Even assuming the practicability of a fair degree of fire control through greatly increased expenditures, is the game worth the candle? The Forests Service men are a tough outfit and it takes a lot to make them admit they are licked, but the amount of taxpayers’ money involved is so great that no false pride or saving of face should prevent a scrutiny of the justification of maintaining such expenditures when weighed against the values obtained, even though it involves and admission of defeat.”

Koch witnessed the great fires of 1910 that cemented the firefighting mission of the Forest Service. Yet he especially understood the futility of fighting fire if it didn't benefit the land or society. He continued:

“The objection may be made that public opinion would not permit withdrawal of fire control from this area (Montana). Some day public opinion may rend the Forest Service for having accomplished so little protection for so much money. Public opinion can be molded, and it is the job of the foresters to lead public opinion in the right direction in forestry matters. Both as citizens and public officials, it is the duty of responsible men in the Forest Service to use the public funds wisely, and not to advocate expenditures that do not yield reasonable returns.”

In 2023, climate change is rapidly converting the type of firefighting that Koch and his contemporaries carried out in the northern Rockies to a full-on battle against increasingly severe fire at ever-escalating costs. Koch's words haunt us. 

Big fire today runs its course until geography or weather slows it down. We throw toxic chemicals at it, send underpaid firefighters into harm's way, and the problem worsens. In Koch's words, it may be time to admit defeat and pull back to the edges of the towns and cities and make our stand against wildfire there. The backcountry will burn despite what we do.

Koch stood on peaks and watched fire cross many watersheds. We stand in the same places with the benefit of historical knowledge and have made only halting progress in accepting fire for what it is and will always be; a product of weather, vegetation, and physics. We can steer fire at its margins, but monster fires like Hermit Peak or Camp will return more frequently. 

Will we hear Elers Koch speaking from when the Forest Service first took on the wilderness?