I’ve been reading “Roughing It” by Mark Twain where he describes his journey west during the 1860’s, in it he describes an incident where he leaves a cooking fire unattended and it spreads into a large forest fire. Twain was known to emblellish which makes me doubt it was as large as he described, but do we know anything about this fire beyond what he said in the book?
I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the coffee-pot, ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a fire, and went back to the boat to get the frying-pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny, and looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises!
Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of flame! It went surging up adjacent ridges—surmounted them and disappeared in the canons beyond—burst into view upon higher and farther ridges, presently—shed a grander illumination abroad, and dove again—flamed out again, directly, higher and still higher up the mountain-side- -threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there, and sent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts and ribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the lofty mountain-fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled network of red lava streams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy glare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell!
Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of the lake! We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thought of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o’clock the conflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness stole down upon the landscape again.
We can't trust anything that Mark Twain writes of his Western sojourn in Roughing It (1872). There is a lot of truth there - there can be a lot of truth in a lie! - but considerable source criticism must be applied.
There is little question that a young Samuel Clements (1835-1910) camped on the shore of Lake Tahoe. There is some question as to where that camp was. I was a guest editor of an issue of the Nevada Historical Quarterly that dealt with aspects of Twain's life in the West; the issue presented contradictory articles dealing with Twain and Tahoe. My feeling is that the Stewart article is the more accurate, placing the Clemens camp on the Nevada side. The opposing article, it seems to me, simply wanted Clemens to have camped on the California side and stretched the information until it could seem that is where he went.
Under the right circumstance, it would be easy to imagine a quick fire spreading along the fallen needles of the forest floor, running rapidly uphill - all without reaching the canopy of the pine trees. This is particularly easy to imagine in the spring - or anytime after a heavy rain. More importantly, we see a dramatic difference in much of the forest landscape of the west (California) and east (Nevada) basin. Rain falls more heavily on the California side, where undergrowth is thicker.
In addition, there was extensive, centuries-old "forest management" by the Washoe Indians who called Tahoe their home for millennia. Pine trees can offer a great source of wood for burning in campfires: the dead lower branches are easily snapped off and used for fuel. This eliminates a dry fuel source and a "fire ladder," depriving a fire a means to go up. It can, consequently, spread rapidly on the forest floor and remain low, reducing its killing effect.
It is very possible that a fire did get away from Clemens. It is also possible that it spread and then burnt itself out without destroying much - or anything.
The situation now is much different. The Sierra is experiencing a prolonged drought that has been unequalled for centuries. The Tahoe forest is also stressed by beetle infestations. This is partly because much of the Tahoe basin is now homogenous: following extensive clear cutting in the 1860s and 1870s to provide Virginia City with lumber, the forest that eventually grew back was much less diverse. A single infestation consequently affects large amounts of the forest, where before, an infestation only attacked a minority of trees.
We also don't have the tree-to-tree forest management of tending to each tree, removing lower, dead branches. And finally, the West is, simply, much hotter than it was in the early 1860s: climate change has increased the temperature and reduced humidity, adding to the vulnerability of the region to forest fires. The Basin is now set up for a fire that will much different from the one Clemens possible caused.