1924 California Forest Fire and the Story of Sattley's Battle

Nevada State Journal (Reno, Nevada) July 20  1924

Submitted by Nancy Piper

Terrible Fight in West Waged Against Forest Fire

Menace of Flames Great As a Result of Drought in Many States

Sattley Story Typical: Fire Fought with Fire, Smoke with “Smokes”

A terrible battle, against almost overwhelming odds, is being waged throughout the west against the ever-present menace of fire in the forest, a menace that has been increased to its greatest proportions as a result of drought.

Already California has suffered from more fires this season than during all of last year and the most dangerous period, the one in which the greatest number of fires occur is still in the future.

Lumber mills have been shut down as a result of losses endured from the fires and because men have been called to fight the flames.

Federal aid has been offered to California and state resources called on to the utmost, in face of one of the greatest perils in the history of California.

Men are being conscripted by the hundreds from the streets of the cities and forced to join those already engaged in efforts to check the spread of the fires.

The results of the losses in California and other lumber states will be felt throughout the west.

The financial loss already has reached untold millions of dollars through the destruction of magnificent trees, homes and logging equipment.

Many lives also have been reported sacrificed as a part of the toll of the flames.

Up in the high hills, in isolated spots, loggers are called from their cabins to fight flames. Men are brought from the streets of the cities to give aid.

Down in the valleys at the edge of the hills the farmers are forced to keep an unrelenting vigil against the creeping tongues of fire, lest they destroy labor of years.

Sattley Fight Typical

The story of Sattley’s fight with the fire that raged in that vicinity for days is the story of dozen of other places throughout the west, in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

The little town of Sattley, Sierra county, California, 40 miles northwest of Reno, is resting again after a long desperate, but successful struggle to save the settlement.

Furniture is back in homes, lifetime savings have been restores to their proper places and the people of the town are congratulating themselves that this time the ravages of the fire were halted before their homes went in its path.

Sattley snuggles in a niche in the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the northwest end of the Sierra valley, almost surrounded by giant trees.

The region is rich in timber land and many mills are located in the neighboring territory.

Excitement Rare

It is a quiet little village, resembling more an eastern settlement than it does a western town surrounded by logging activities and ranches.

It is seldom that excitement is known there. But –

It has been a little more than a week since flames were licking at the doors, creeping through the fences around their yards.  And no man knows when they will reappear, the result of a fire built by a careless camper or sheep herder.

For days the people assisted by hundreds of men recruited from the logging camps, lumber mills and ranches, battled.

Tragedy Ever Near

The story of that fight is one of humor and pathos, with tragedy ever in the offing.

A touch of the harvest time in large ranches of the middle west, was given to the conflict.

There were men to cook for.  Not the usual 10 or 12, but hundreds of men.  For two days the cooking was done by the women of the town in two of the homes.  Four hundred men were fed that way, and they were hungry men, you can take the word of any woman who was there for it.

Then accommodations for the fighting forces assumed the aspect of a military camp.  Two men cooks were brought in with camp cooking equipment.  Tents sprung up in the fields at the edge of the mountains, near the town.

“Iron rations,” were doled out.

Then the question of “makin’s” arose.

“Twas a problem of “fighting fire with fire”; fighting smoke with smoke.

Held up in the camp for days, the men ran out of tobacco.  The entire supply in the cross-roads store owned by F. H. Turner, was used and then the men began to go smokeless.

“Makin’s” Important

And to those men of the hills, their “Five Brothers” and “Copenhagen”, “Bull” and “Climax” is as important as bread and meat.  Tobacco must be obtained.

A visitor who was in Sattley when the fire started, and who was conscripted to fight the flames, was rushed to Reno for cigarettes and pipe tobacco.

He made two trips while the men were in camp.  A big sum was spent by him for the “smokes”.

Returning to the fire line, he drove past the men, handing out the rations.

Glad cries sprang from the parched lips of fighters, who had been facing the flames and the bellowing clouds of smoke for 5 o’clock that afternoon – without a smoke.

Women Keep Busy

Back in the village the women, relieved of the task of cooking for the men, were not idle.

They kept their homes prepared for instant evacuation, through the long days and nights.  All movable property was piled out in the fields where it was hoped the flames would not reach.

The families “camped out” in their own homes.

To women of the town is given much credit for the final conquest of the fire.  While the flames were roaring so loudly that shouting was necessary in the village streets, the telephones were kept in almost constant use,  sending out appeals for help.  Loyalton, Sierraville, Portola, Beckwith and Reno were requested to send men and men came in sufficient numbers that the fight at last was successful.

Now Sattley is quiet again.  History has been made. The fire was the worst ever known in the region.

Danger Still Present

But the danger is not passed.  It will not be until the hills are covered with a blanket of snow.

And hundreds of acres of blackened land, fallen trees, only giant lumps of charcoal tell part of the story of some man’s carelessness. But the story of the long hours spent by the men and women who were there cannot be told.

Cabin of “Ben” Franklin’s Descendant Saved in Fire; Flames Play Queer Tricks

Sattley, Cal., July 18

After the smoke had cleared away, many freakish whims of the recent forest-fire here were disclosed.

A little log cabin which is in a canyon, directly in the path of the flames was left standing.  The cabin, belonging to J. H. Franklin, said to be a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin, is on a small island formed by the branching of a creek, and is surrounded by green alders.  That is probably the reason that the sparks failed to catch it.

Where the Calpine road branches, stand two vacant house.  On the afternoon of July 4^th, fire was raging about them so that the road was closed.  No one was watching the buildings as all of the men were protecting the inhabited dwellings farther from the fire.  That evening the houses were found untouched, although pine trees less than 300 feet away were burned.

Two barns out in a meadow stood scarcely 50 feet apart.  Sparks blew across from the flaming mountainside and burned the smaller barn to the ground.  Not a cinder fell on the larger one, which is full of hay.