52 pages • 1 hour read
Timothy EganThe Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “In on the Creation”
Chapter 4 Summary: “Deadwood Days”
The town of Taft, emblematic of the “wild west,” is derisively named by its inhabitants after the future president William H. Taft and described as “the wickedest city in America” (73). The town is inside a national forest reserve under Ranger Koch’s jurisdiction. Pinchot had not visited Taft or described its open lawlessness to Koch before assigning him there. Koch arrives to find the town full of prostitutes, gambling, and hopeless drunks. Koch and his team of both permanent and seasonal rangers work in the forests: stringing telephone wire, building trails, rescuing hunters and hikers, felling dead trees. They travel deep in the forest on multi-day excursions subsisting on nothing but tea, sugar, raisins, and hard tack.
Weigle is stationed “just over the ridge in Idaho” (75), in the Coeur d’Alene. His territory contains three depraved towns, the worst of which being Grand Forks, “where muddy streets thick with filth and feces were lined with burned-out stumps […] Saloons were held together by rough-cut planks, with canvas-walled cribs out back […] for quick paid sex” (75). Broken-down wagons remain in streets until they are burned or picked for scrap. The Little G.P.s expected to find honest homesteaders in the public lands, but instead they find land thieves, whiskey peddlers, and pimps “operating in open defiance of the U.S. Forest Service” (75).
Work on what is to be the largest and most ambitious rail project, the Milwaukee Road financed by William Rockefeller, continues throughout the forest, while timber magnates skin the reserves of white pine in sawmills. Egan contextualizes: “All of this took place in an area where, just a few years earlier, a human being could have wandered for days without bumping into another” (76). Workers decimate the forests and mountains by day, then at night they raise hell in the newly sprouted towns. Timber cruisers litter the forests, hired by logging companies to establish homesteads then sell to timber companies, who are prohibited from homesteading.
Rangers work preventing fires, enlisting timber cruisers and others to help early detection of forest fires. Most townspeople have no reason to fear fires and thus no incentive to help. They are at the end of a typical 30-year fire cycle and have never seen the destruction of a large forest fire.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Showdown”
The popular President Roosevelt is able to handpick his successor, William H. Taft, whom he believes shares his progressive and conservationist ideals. Roosevelt and Taft are opposites in many ways: Roosevelt is physically active, vigorous, and ambitious, while Taft is subdued and desires more than anything to be agreeable. What Roosevelt mistakes for shared ideology is really Taft’s desire to please Roosevelt. Roosevelt is convinced that his progressive agenda is safe in Taft’s hands, but once Roosevelt leaves office, Taft is susceptible to others’ manipulations. Though Taft pledges “to stand by and carry on the conservation fight” (87), Pinchot doubts Taft will follow through, considering him superficial, silly, and malleable. Roosevelt meets with world leaders before the end of his term “to get other nations to see their rivers, their forests, their farm fields, their oil and coal, their wildlife as valuable assets that would not last if they failed to become good stewards” (88), then he leaves offices and travels to Africa.
Taft is outmatched by Congress. Heyburn’s strategy is to cripple the forest service through a series of little blows. Pinchot heads west and finds “his rangers full of misery” (89). Budget cutbacks leave them short-staffed, without supplies, and living in harsh conditions. There is no money for fire patrols in advance of the dry season, which physically taxes the rangers and places them in danger. Before leaving for Washington, Pinchot promises the rangers he will fight Congress for increased funding. When he returns to Washington, he finds the city changed. Without Roosevelt’s boisterousness, all energy and excitement is gone. Pinchot tries to counsel Taft, but they are at odds. He also learns that Taft has replaced his only conservationist ally remaining in the administration, James Garfield, the son of assassinated President Garfield, with Richard Ballinger, who has “ties to some of the biggest land barons in the West” (91). Ballinger is against “the conservation crusade,” a view that Taft secretly shares. Pinchot is vocal and public in his criticism of Taft, but Taft lacks the political capital among Roosevelt loyalists to fire Pinchot. Taft believes “the conservation movement had gone too far too fast, and that too much land had been put in the public’s hands” (93).
The Little G.P.s are overwhelmed. The opening of Milwaukee Road brings modern industry to the Bitterroots. The iron tracks start fires easily, which creates “a serious problem for the undermanned Forest Service” (93), still receiving little support from the federal government. Heyburn works to decimate the national forests. He crafts a bill to transfer millions of acres from public to private ownership. Taft does not have the constitution to fight Heyburn. Many rangers contemplate leaving the service.
Soon, Ballinger is engulfed in a scandal involving a fraudulent land deal in preserved public Alaskan land that divides the Republican Party. Pinchot urges Taft to fire Ballinger, but Taft remains supportive. The scandal persists for a year, during which Ballinger sheds all guise of conservationism and embraces wholesale privatization of all land in the West. In a series of public speeches and written articles, Pinchot brings his arguments to the people. He is now directly antagonizing the Taft administration and winning support. Progressive Republicans turn on Taft and threaten his presidency. Pinchot finally pushes Taft over the edge when he has a letter critical of Taft read to Congress. Taft fires him the next day.
That spring in the Bitterroots there is no rain. Winter snow melts early and dry weather follows. Trains running through the forest kick up sparks and create small fires, which tax the forest service. Without Pinchot, the rangers are demoralized; without funds, they are overworked and underpaid. Then, smoke begins to fill the woods. By midsummer, lightning is causing daily fires. For the first time since they joined the forest service, rangers begin to wonder about the consequences of a large-scale fire.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
The West at the turn of the century is untamed. It exists at the precipice of unbridled nature and the dawn of 20th-century-industry. This crossroads between untapped, destructive nature and new, destructive industry will soon prove fatal. Adding to the ominous mix of nature and industry are the careless and neglectful actions of those who live on the land. The lifespan of someone working in the railroad, mining, or timber industries is short, and workers act in a manner that reflects a short lifespan—every night is treated as if it is their last. Most have no regard for the land. They see it only as a meal ticket and possibly a path to riches. This attitude benefits big business immensely. Not only do workers and homesteaders feel no connection to the land they destroy, they see no value in preserving the land (thus leaving land barons to monopolize and privatize wealth). Again, these divisive issues still exist in present-day politics, including issues with climate change, national parks, and drilling.
The workers in Egan’s narrative can’t worry about conservation and preservation because they must focus on survival, highlighting the differences between classes. Roosevelt and world leaders can appreciate the beauty of the land because they view it from a different perspective. The workers on the ground have even less regard for the rangers who steward the land. Underfunded and short staffed, rangers struggle to gain cooperation from homesteaders, those working in the forests, and industry heads. Increased industry in the pristine forests increases fires, which rangers cannot control with their limited resources. And without the public’s concern and diligence, these fires will soon prove fatally destructive.
One of Roosevelt’s failures as President is his selection of Taft as his successor. Roosevelt, unlike many presidents, selects his successor. Taft deceives him into choosing someone who does not share his vision for the country and is too afraid to fight for things he does believe in. Taft sweeps most of Roosevelt’s progressive agenda aside, including conservation and the national forests, in favor of unbridled ceding to private interests. Public lands are transferred to private interests and funding for the Forest Service is all but eliminated during the most fire-prone season in history. Taft’s failure underscores the theme of private versus public interests. Congress, suffering from the greed of big business, wants to keep land private so that a select few benefit from the wealth. Wealthy congressmen like Ballinger and Clark openly defy the forest service and conservationism—public interest—to keep their own pockets stuffed with riches. For a while, Pinchot successfully involves the public in shaming big business and privatization, but his firing by Taft ushers in a period of major privatization and demoralization for public interests.
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By Timothy Egan
