The Biggest Burn: Yacolt 1902

Street Smart Naturalist · Aug 27, 2026 · 7m · transcript

2026 is turning into one of the worst fire seasons in Washington history. The reasons are many: a fourth straight year of drought, unusually hot weather, previous forest management, each play a role. The last is perhaps the most important in that forests across the state are primed to burn because of how we have managed them for the past 100 plus years. Intriguingly, the long held belief in Washington state that wildfire is one of the great evils of the world and must be held in check, which has dictated many people’s relationship to wildfires, can be traced back to a single fire, the Yacolt…