TY  - BOOK
AU  - Egan,Timothy
TI  - The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
SN  - 9780618968411
AV  - E757 .E325 2009
U1  - 973.911 22
PY  - 2009///
CY  - Boston
PB  - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
KW  - Roosevelt, Theodore,
KW  - Pinchot, Gifford,
KW  - United States
KW  - National Park Service
KW  - History
KW  - Presidents
KW  - Biography
KW  - Conservationists
KW  - Forest conservation
KW  - Nature conservation
KW  - National parks and reserves
KW  - Forest fires
KW  - Montana
KW  - Biographies
KW  - fast
KW  - lcgft
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-305) and index
N2  - On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Equally dramatic is the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot's rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected -- or not -- today
UR  - http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1108/2009021881-s.html
UR  - http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1204/2009021881-t.html
UR  - http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/2009021881-b.html
UR  - http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/2009021881-d.html
ER  -