Yacolt Burn exhibit in Battle Ground timely

For more than a century, the inferno that swept across stretches of Clark County in 1902 stood as the largest fire in Washington history.

The Yacolt Burn erupted in September 1902 and killed 38 people. Raging through portions of Clark, Skamania and Klickitat counties, it scorched more than 350 square miles — the equivalent of more than half the area of Clark County.

The Yacolt Burn was the biggest in state history until 2014, when the Carlton Complex fire in North Central Washington charred more than 400 square miles.

Some might remember the Yacolt Burn as a north woods firestorm, stopping just short of its namesake logging town. But its southwest edge was a spot fire in the Proebstel area, near what now is Northeast Fourth Plain Road and 192nd Avenue in east Vancouver.

That was the first in a series of wildland fires known as Yacolt burns, according to The Columbian’s previous looks at the 1902 fire. The U.S. Forest Service noted 16 separate burns between 1910 and 1924 in what’s now the Yacolt Burn State Forest and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Several more fires, each burning tens of thousands of acres, popped up over the years. The last big one occurred in 1952, when about 15,000 acres were destroyed.

The legacy of the 1902 Yacolt Burn is the subject of a new — and extremely topical — exhibit at the Battle Ground Community Library.

“Wildfires are rampant this time of year, especially at the end of summers like this one: hot and dry,” local historian Louise Tucker said as she announced the exhibit. “It is critical for homeowners to be aware of the conditions that cause wildfires.”

Talk about timing. The exhibit opened Tuesday, just as the Eagle Creek Fire in Oregon jumped the Columbia River and spread to Skamania County.

That echoed one of the possible causes of the 1902 Yacolt Burn. Some attributed it to sparks from an Oregon fire crossing the Columbia River. Others blamed little boys who were burning out a yellowjackets’ nest, Tucker said.

Others blamed slash burns that ran out of control or sparks from trains. There likely was more than one fire that contributed to the eventual conflagration.

Wherever the first spark came from, it found plenty of tinder in a landscape that had gone 77 days without rain.

You can still read first-person accounts of the disaster, thanks to oral histories. In 2002, The Columbian’s centennial coverage of the Yacolt Burn included a “voices from the past” segment. It include Yacolt teacher Grace V. Stearns’ memories of Sept. 11, 1902.

“Everyone knew there was a fire somewhere, but where? Shortly after 4 p.m., ashes and fir needles began to fall,” Stearns said. By bedtime, “a distinct distant roar could be heard, like the machinery of some great factory. However, there was a rhythm and a beat to it, such as I have never heard since.”

J.A. Hart described how three loggers working on the Upper Washougal River sought refuge in a tunnel: “The fire was bearing down upon them, rolling through the tops of trees in great waves. The roar was deafening, punctuated at short intervals by the crash of falling timber. The speed of the fire was tremendous and the heat was unendurable while the smoke was stifling.

“With a mighty effort, they surged ahead, gaining the top of the ridge and plunging heedlessly down the other side to the mouth of the tunnel. They crawled in and lay down, too spent for further effort.”

Summaries of newspaper stories in September 1902 included other aspects of the disaster: at least 100 families were left homeless; cinders and ash fell like a snowstorm; with the sun blotted out, lights were needed in the middle of the day.

But there were also relief measures that sound familiar. Calls for aid generated cash contributions. Donors provided groceries and clothing, “hauled to the Court House in wagon loads.”

The Battle Ground library exhibit includes an account of a 1909 fire written by Katherine Kettenring. Her husband, Fred Kettenring, owned a sawmill just above Lucia Falls. When a fire threatened their cottages, Mrs. Kettenring and other mill families took their children to the millpond. The water, she said, “lay between us and destruction.”

Several workmen were on top of the pond’s dam.

“With buckets and a hose they saved the dam from burning and saved the pond for us!”

Around 2 a.m., “we began eating raw eggs to keep us going thru that awful vigil — and at 4 a.m. our men came down from the dam to tell us the worst was over.”

They learned that their homes had survived the fire. But they did not collapse in relief, she stressed. Instead, Kettenring wrote something that has been echoed by a lot of people following a lot of disasters since then:

“We had work to do.”