While my Red River series covers a tremendous amount of material on the Red River Lumber Company, there were some topics that were not addressed. In 1938, the topic of controlled burns was being discussed, as the company had done it in its earliest years until Clinton Walker’s departure in 1913. Below is an excerpt of a 1938 memo Clinton wrote to the Board and the experience of a control burn at Lake Almanor.
“I do not dispute the facts as I recall them as stated by Kenneth [Walker], but I am not ready yet to acquisce in his conclusions. Kenneth looks at our timber tract afflicted with various maladies as a doctor would look at a patient who has a tourniquet around his neck and considers the best way to treat the patient for protruding tongue, black and blue face, bulging eyes, etc. I would prefer to remove tourniquet in our timber matters is the lack of fire. In view of the antiquity of our forests, I do not see how anyone can help but come to the conclusion that the elimination of the customary summer fires which the forests have grown up with is the direct cause of the various pests which have assumed such damaging and alarming proportion since the advent of fire protection. The present stand of timber is very old, the larger Sugar and Ponderosa being five hundred or perhaps more of age. That being the case, it seems certain that the forests have passed through every known cycle of climatic conditions, wet years, dry years, dry cycles, windstorm, etc. Even now with all the “Prevent Fires” agitation, 75 to 80% of the forest fires are started by lightning. So that even without the incendiary fires started or alleged started by Indians lightning has kept the forests o fire from summer to summer whenever there was sufficient forest litre to support a running fire. The forest thrived on these fires, some damage was done, but the general condition of the forests when the white man first came into California was very excellent. When we first began cruising and Father began buying the fire risk was considered as being very small and the beetle infection was not even given thought. Then came the foresters from Yale University and put the tourniquet on the forests, with the results described by Kenneth.
“If a forest can resist the beetles and the rust and other pests for five hundred or a thousand years successfully and then men eliminate the summer fires and almost immediately these pests, new to the forest in damaging quantities move in, then I think it is only reasonable to conclude that it is the direct cause.
“I base my belief that the situation is not hopeless and that light burning is not outmoded, especially on burning that we did near the old Bunnell Hotel, [It was located on the tip of the present day Lake Almanor Peninsula]. There was a long peninsula between the two main areas of the big meadow where by reasons of the meadow on both sides, the Bunnell hotel and some rail fences that they protected, had not been burned over in fifty years. The growth was very dense. We cut out with a crew of Indians the white fir surrounding the big timber trees. Then right after a rain we burned it over. There was no tendency for the fire to run out of bounds not to damaging extent. Some of the side hills the fire would crackle and pop but without serious damage. Two years later we leased the burned over land for sheep grazing for the first time we were able to lease it. The feed the second year after a burning is excellent for sheep. Sheep assist materially in reducing the fire hazard. And so I believe we could again burn the land over. In places it would be necessary to bull doze down the thickets under the big trees and then touch it off right after a rain, as soon as it would burn. In the winter it will not burn at all. In the summer the forest burn too hard. Hence twice a year it passes through periods where it will burn to an allowable extent. The period of a allowable burning varies, some years the burning period is long and some years short or perhaps the change is from too dry to too wet in an excessive storm. Some falls it gets all right, then gets to wet and then gets all right again. Some falls it gets all right and then gets too dry again so that the work must be done with great care and judgment as to the allowable burning period. The most hazardous conditions must be burned during periods when there is small danger of damage.”
Note: In a few weeks, I will do a follow up with Clinton Walker’s early control burns at Clear Creek and the Forest Service response.