Yacolt Burn

The Yacolt Burn is the collective name for dozens of fires in Washington state and Oregon occurring between September 8 and September 12, 1902, causing 38 deaths in the Lewis River area, at least nine deaths by fire in Wind River and 18 deaths in the Columbia River Gorge.

The Yacolt Burn (also known as the Yacolt Fire, the Yacolt Blaze, the Yacolt-Cispus Burn, or the Columbia Fire of 1902) was the result of many weather factors as well as careless humans. The summer of 1902 had been drier than normal and early September winds blowing from west to east. A build-up of slash from loggers had not been burned off properly in the preceding two summers. On September 8 a fire was started by boys trying to burn a nest of yellow jackets near Eagle Creek, Oregon. Other large fires the occurred independently or combined with other fires started soon thereafter, including one started by a locomotive in Dodson, Oregon. Other accounts cite lightning as the genesis of the fire as well as careless campers and berry pickers, hunters, and loggers cutting slash. The fire spread rapidly, extending from Bridal Veil, Oregon to Cascade Locks, Oregon before burning debris carried across the Columbia River to Washington. It traveled 30 miles (48 km) in 36 hours and destroyed 238,920 acres (967 km²) of timber, about 12 billion board feet (28,000,000 m³), in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties.

The fires ravaged the towns of Vale, Bucoda, and Elma, Washington. Although the fire's namesake is for the town of Yacolt, Washington, that town did not burn in the fires. The loss of all property was assessed at a 1902 value of US$12,767,100. The property damage in Multnomah County, Oregon was estimated at more than one million dollars.

...
Wikipedia