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Thank goodness they found a culprit for the Hayman Fire. For a while, it appeared that our Colorado politicians might have to revert to their traditional ways of assessing blame -- by pointing the finger some unpopular group.
This dates back to 1879, just three years after Colorado
became a state. Frederick Pitkin had been elected governor
in 1878 with a simple campaign slogan: The Utes Must
Go.
At the time, most of the Western Slope was Ute reservation, and Colorado prospectors and homesteaders were eager to take the territory into their own hands.
To be fair, I should note that the Utes didn't vote, and Pitkin was responding to the desires of his electorate. Fairness also demands that we recognize that the media of the day were more than complicit in the process of adjusting public opinion.
The best account at hand is in a book which, alas, is no
longer in print, Massacre: Tragedy at White River,
by Marshall Sprague. We pick up in May of 1879 here:
It had rained just once during that spring, and that
was all the rain for many months. Ordinarily, forest fires
in the Colorado Rockies caused no concern. They were
started by lightning, by careless campers, by ranchers
destroying sage and by Utes driving game with fire and
clearing underbrush from pony trails. But the forest fires
could not die out during the unprecedented drought of 1879.
By July, the forests blazed in a hundred places....
Denver newspaper editors ... went to work on
gathering testimony so that they could blame all the fires
on all the Utes. James B. Thompson told them that
Washington's band started fires on Bear River which
threatened his home and haystacks. Land Office Surveyor
General Campbell said that Colorow's band had fired North
Park and ordered his transit men to leave the park. Frank
Byers said Antelope's band fired Gore Range and that
Ouray's Uncompahgres were trying to burn up the silver
camps of Irwin and Gothic above the Gunnison. Miners from
Hahn's Peak and Leadville and the San Juans told the
editors about the big 'Ute fires' near their diggings.
Even Sam Hartsel in South Park said the smoke from
Ute-caused fires was making his heifers hard to settle.
On July 5, Secretary Vickers (Pitkin's assistant)
composed a wire for the Indian Bureau which Governor Pitkin
signed. It asked for troops to drive roving Utes back onto
their Reservation and concluded:
'I am satisfied there is an organized effort on the
part of Indians to destroy the timber of Colorado. These
savages should be removed to Indian territory where they
can no longer destroy the finest forests in this
state.'
Later historians have found no evidence of any
organized effort
by the Utes to get us white folks
to respect our own treaties, but it didn't matter then --
the Utes were gone by 1881.
It is fun to speculate where the blame will fall for this fire season.
Gov. Bill Owens might point out that six-lane divided highways make excellent fire breaks, while also providing the means for rapid response with major-league fire-fighting equipment, so anyone who questions the need for more highway construction must be in favor of more forest fires.
Sen. Ben Campbell, who has said that environmentalists represent a threat to national security, could observe that successful opposition to logging means more fuel build-up in the forest, making fires more severe than they might otherwise have been. He could add that overgrazing reduces, or perhaps even eliminates, the risk that a fire will spread across unforested areas. Thus the responsibility lies with anyone who opposes subsidized grazing and below-cost timber sales.
Rep. Scott McInnis could blame opponents of public-land user fees. After all, the federal government does have enough money to provide tax breaks to the heirs of billionaires, but it does not have enough money to maintain our forests. That money should come from hikers, anglers, hunters, bird-watchers and back-road drivers, and if those free-loaders don't want to pay, then the fires must be their fault.
An entire herd of Colorado Water Buffaloes, led by former State Rep. Chris Paulson, could blame the Republicans for not building Two Forks Reservoir north of Deckers. For one thing, it might have been big enough to stop the fire sooner, and for another, it would have provided a nearby water supply for slurry bombers and the like.
And it was a Republican governor, John Vanderhoof, who vetoed the project in 1973, just as it was a Republican administration in Washington, that of George Bush the elder, which in 1989 killed the renewed project.
The simple fact is that there are small fires all the time. They grow into big ones on account of two factors beyond human control: drought and wind.
But saying that doesn't advance anyone's political cause or career. Someone must be blamed. Fortunately, at least as far as Colorado tradition is concerned, there should be enough fires to go around this year.
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