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The Tillamook Burn was a series of in the Northern Oregon Coast Range of Oregon in the United States that destroyed a total area of of old growth timber in what is now known as the Tillamook State Forest. There were four wildfires in this series, which spanned the years of 1933–1958. By association, the name Tillamook Burn also refers to the location of these fires. This event is an important part of Oregon's history.
The speed with which a forest fire can spread in heavy fuels under the most hazardous conditions is well illustrated by this fire. From August 14 at 1 p.m. until the early morning of August 24 the fire had burned about and it appeared that it might be brought under control soon. Thus, for over 10 days it had burned at an average rate of about a day. On August 24, the humidity dropped rapidly to 26 percent and hot gale-force winds from the east sprang up. During the next 20 hours of August 24 and 25 the fire burned over an additional , or at a rate of per hour along a front. The fire was stopped only by the fact that the wind ceased and a thick, wet blanket of fog drifted in from the ocean.
The third fire was perhaps the best known, after the initial wildfire, because it affected much of the forested mountains along the popular highways between Portland and the recreational destinations of the Oregon Coast. This devastation remained visible to any traveler through the area as late as the mid-1970s.
The town of Timber expanded during the time and became a prominent logging town along with the smaller town of Cochran oregon to the west. Some of the logging companies near Glenwood joined their operations to form the Consolidated Timber Company. The lumber from these operations played an important part in providing wood resources to the United States during World War II.
Throughout the subsequent years, miles of roads and railroad lines and were built through the forest to the various logging camps providing enhanced access. This made it easier for forestry restoration, maintenance, and fire prevention operations allowing them eventually to get a handle on the continued series of burns, however it had the secondary effect of creating new issues with erosion among a terrain known for landslides.
In a book published that same year, Stewart Holbrook wrote about the Tillamook Burn in Northwest Corner: Oregon and Washington:
[Reforestation] can never compensate for that tragedy we call the Tillamook Burn, as somber a sight as to be viewed this side of the Styx. There they stand, millions of ghostly Douglas fir, now stark against the sky, which were green as the sea and twice as handsome, until an August day of 1933, when a tiny spark blew into a hurricane of fire that removed all life from of the finest timber even seen. It was timber, too, that had been 400 years in the making. It was wiped out in a few seething hours which Oregon will have reason to remember well past the year 2000. To this day the forest stands powerless against the threat of wildfires.
Reforestation was performed simultaneously with research by the forest industry into the best methods of growing and planting the young trees (including how to protect them from the ravages of deer, beavers, mice and other wildlife). Young people from northwest Oregon helped with the hand-planting of seedlings. Between 1949 and 1972, they planted about a million seedlings, a massive number but still only about 1 percent of the total of 72 million seedlings replanted by all means. Everything from state prisoners to newly designed helicopters played a part in the reseeding program over the years.Lucia, supra, at 185 and 215. Eventually the forest began to return and in 1973, Oregon Governor Tom McCall dedicated the Tillamook Burn as the Tillamook State Forest.
At the time the reforestation of the Tillamook Burn began, some assumed that the forest land would, when the trees were mature, be harvested for lumber. Current environmental beliefs have questioned this assumption, and both the proportions and specific parts of this land that will be logged or conserved for wildlife are in dispute.
Folk singer Sufjan Stevens references the Tillamook Burn in his song "Fourth of July" from his album Carrie & Lowell.
Martin Milner mentioned the Tillamook Burn in the 1960 Route 66 episode “Legacy for Lucia.”
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