50 years ago

Fifty years ago today, construction crews working on Interstate 80 along the north side of Donner Lake inadvertently started a huge wildfire on Donner Ridge. Whipped by winds, it roared eastward. Firefighters stopped the blaze from destroying the historic Donner family camp at Alder Creek, however, by bulldozing a line in time to protect the area. Consequently, when three years later Highway 89 was completed and the site had become the Donner Camp Picnic Area, the (alleged) George Donner Tree still stood, and continued to stand until its top fell off about 1996, leaving the snag that remains today. (See the article in today's Sierra Sun for more about the fire.)

Wildfire on Hastings Cutoff

Skull Valley was full of smoke on the afternoon of on August 2, 1846, when the nine members of the Bryant-Russell Party arrived at Redlum Spring. They camped early and rose in the middle of the night to begin preparations to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert. At 1:30 A.M. on August 3, Edwin Bryant wrote, the nearly full moon* looked "like a ball of fire, and shining with a dim and baleful light, seemed struggling downwards through the thick bank of smoky vapor that overhung and curtained the high ridge of mountains to the west of us." The Donner Party, passing through the area a little over three weeks after Bryant, made no mention smoke or fire, one of the few misfortunes they missed on their disastrous trek west.

163 years later, the moon is full and Skull Valley is again filled with the smoke of a wildfire. A lightning strike near Iosepa on August 6, 2009, sparked the Big Pole Fire, which, fanned by the wind, has consumed more than 44,000 acres as it's raced north along the Stansbury Mountains on eastern side of the valley. BLM firecrews battled the flames all day Thursday and today; this morning the smell of smoke hung in the air in Salt Lake City, over40 miles away.


*The U.S. Naval Observatory website provides details of moon phases -- type in any year you like between 1700 and 2035 in the search box and click "Get data."