The most famous of all these paths was the one known as the Bay Path. It was in existence in 1673, and doubtless before. It left the Old Connecticut Path at Wayland, Massachusetts, and ran through Marlborough to Worcester, then to Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, where jutted off the Hadley Path, to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley, while the Bay Path rejoined the Old Connecticut Path and thus on to Springfield. Holland wrote of the Bay Path in his novel of that title: -

“It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was bridged, no hill was graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through woods which bore the mark of centuries, over barren hills which had been licked by the Indian hounds of fire, and along the banks of streams that the seine had never dragged, A powerful interest was attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That rough thread of soil, chipped by the blades of a hundred streams, was a trail that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of love, and interest, and hope, and memory. Every rod had been prayed over by friends on the journey and friends at home.”

STAGECOACH and TAVERN DAYS
Alice Morse Earle, MacMillan, New York — 1900.
CHAPTER X. FROM PATH TO TURNPIKE

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/ABL/etext/stagetavern/chp10.html

The Scituate monitors helped thwart the Japanese attempts to bomb the United States with TNT-laden hot-air balloons. To keep track of the silent craft, the Japanese placed radio transmitters on aboard the deadly balloons. But the RID eavesdroppers heard the signals, related the information to Washington and U.S. fighter planes were promptly dispatched to destroy the balloons.

In the entire course of the war, only a few balloons penetrated the electronic screen; one landed harmlessly in Wisconsin, and others drifted off into the Canadian wilderness.

Source (archive)

During World War II, the Federal Communications Commission operated a Radio Intercept facility on Chopmist Hill (a high, broad plain) in Scituate, RI. It was considered the most effective of thirteen such stations. I remember driving through this area as a kid in the 1970s and knowing something weird was done here by the odd phone poles you could still see. I’m not sure if the trees are more mature now or the poles have been taken out, it doesn’t stand out as much today.

For a brief time this location was on a short-list of potential headquarters sites for the United Nations, since it was felt the excellent radio communications and the ability to build an airfield there would be natural complements to being the headquarters. Then the Rockefellers donated the land in the New York City and the rest as they say was history.

There’s only two LODD incidents I know of in southern New England due to the fire (and not exertion / medical problems). One is this 1938 burn over on Cape Cod which killed three firefighters. The other was in Rhode Island near the Connecticut line, possibly in 1942 although I still have to hunt down official documentation, which again killed three in a burn over of their truck. I don’t know if shelters would make a difference in the circumstances of these burn overs. It may be better to emphasize the Canadian / Australian model of better awareness and avoidance for the conditions in this area.

A really great write up of managing fire in New England Pine Barrens, archive here.

In addition to those “natural community” issues, few active firefighters have seen truly severe fire conditions in New England.

Although rainfall alone doesn’t dictate fire danger (frequency of rain is likely much more important in New England in keeping fire danger to “high” or below), the following graphs show a very sharp difference between pre-1970 and post-1970 climate. You can get more data for different regions of the New England states here.

I strongly suspect that it is not coincidence that we haven’t had a serious forest fire problem in southern New England since the early 1960s. Before, roughly, 1970 we used to experience a deep drought about every ten years. Nothing since 1970 has matched those 10 year droughts.

Also I’m still researching the frequency rain events. Rain tends to “reset” the fire danger.

Let’s assume a cycle like this; while conjecture it’s not an unreasonable cycle based on my observations over the years:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: High
Day 6: High
Day 7: Very High
Day 8: Very High
Day 9: Very High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Now add in one overnight rain:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: Rain overnight (moderate)
Day 6: Moderate
Day 7: High
Day 8: High
Day 9: High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Most people wouldn’t notice a major impact from an extra shower or two in April, but it could be having a very large impact on fire danger.

At old ranches and on some remaining farms near the foothills, one can see old barbed-wire-fence “pitch posts.” These relics of a bygone era artistically reveal some Colorado history and provide an interesting forestry lesson.

Pitch posts were cut and split from the dense and heavy wood of live pitchy trees. Pitch is a resin found in evergreen trees and it forms when trees are injured. When the injury is caused by heat from ground-surface, low-intensity forest fires, and the fire has not killed the tree, more sap is made. This resin then concentrates in outer layers of sap-wood.

Long ago, forest fires were started from lightning and often times by indigenous people. Native Americans knew that a flush of new and tender vegetation that sprouts after fire meant well-nourished game and thus better hunting. With no human effort to suppress forest fires, they were frequent, and trees were often injured by fire.

In those conditions, a “relatively young,” 150-year-old tree may have received fire damage three, four, five or more times in its lifetime. A living tree exposed to that many fires accumulates high concentrations of pitch all the way from its heartwood center out to the bark.

…

Back then, many forest fires persisted for months. These long-lasting fires took on a variety of day-to-day behavior, depending upon weather, terrain and fuel conditions in their path. Some fires smoldered underground for a long time as root fires, only to be rekindled with a strong, dry wind. Over centuries of time, subsequent fires affected miles and miles of forest, covering a wide range of aspects and elevations.

Archived here.

The articles that follow are from the New London Day documenting a break out of wildfires in Connecticut and Rhode Island (as well as the rest of the northeast).

There were warning signs at the very end of April, with a large fire in Colchester, East Hampton, and Marlborough consuming 3,000 acres. Even by the standards of the day that was a fairly large fire:

A few days later Waterford had a woods fire.

This one only covered 100 acres, but something ominous was occurring:

Foreman Thomas B. Woodworth of the Quaker Hill fire department [said] some of the “new” fires broke out 1,000′ ahead of the firemen. He said that it was possible the blazes may have been started from blazing bits of dried chestnut wood.

Ok, so we’re also in the middle of the Chestnut Blight that put a very large load of dead fuels in the forests. But that aside, since the trees were dead the year before and the year after and we didn’t have these intense fires every year…they were seeing “spotting” 1,000′ ahead of the fire. In Connecticut. (This is the first documentation I’ve seen that gives a distance with what we can expect for spotting in our area in an extreme fire year).

Then all hell broke loose.

From The New London Day on May 5, 1930:

Six homes, thirty other buildings, and 3,000 acres in Westerly and Charlestown, RI that burned essentially to the sea:

250 homes in Nashua, NH are destroyed by a brush fire that turned into an urban conflagaration:

A fire in Glastonbury, later put at around 2,500 acres, would burn five miles in length from it’s origin, and at one point reach four miles wide. Being fought by 1,000 men. “Small” fires burning 60 to 150 acres destroyed buildings in Newtown & Windsor. Another 1,000 acres in Bristol. And a 2,500 more acres in New Britain / Southington / Plainville. So a 1,000 men…that’s what, a request for 40 strike teams today? And oh by the way, we have two more fires of this size within 20 miles of here, too…oh I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that request arrives at the DEMHS.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, 1,500 acres was burning by Marlborough and 2,000 acres in Russel, two of the “20 bad and 75 minor” fires that day:

Niantic was busy trying to protect their cottages from a brush fire:

I only got the last half of this article on New London County…multiple fires in Waterford with hundreds fighting them, Gungywamp in Groton, 2,500 acres in Preston, Ledyard, and North Stonington:

On the sixth comes an article that would have folks throw a fit today:

Finally, at the risk of pulling a Ron Popeil and going, “But wait, there’s more!”

Connecticut’s first state forester, Austin Hawes, would later place the total acreage in Connecticut that burned in this first week of May, 1930 at around 25,000 acres. And they were actually kind of pleased by that — the last bad year of 1922 had seen 80,000 acres burn.

Washington County, RI would see some 30,000 acres burn. An article up above already mentioned the 3,000 acre fire in Westerly. North of Westerly there were two more fires that burned along the Connecticut and Rhode Island borders, in Rhode Island alone one consumed 10,000 acres and the other 12,000.

The worse of these ignited around Glasgo, CT (Griswold by the Voluntown town line) and burned all the way to Nooseneck Hill Road — today’s R.I. Route 3, or spitting distance from where I-95 crosses the state today. The proximity of the two big fires, along with the spotting that was occurring, it’s quite likely they were a single fire and/or merged along the way.

This same fire is described several times in various histories of the Yawgood Scout Reservation, such as this one:

The plateau was the place where Chief Williams and “Gus” Anthony had a dangerous encounter with the great forest fire, as described in the second edition of The Story of the Yawgoog Trails:

Chief Williams and Gus Anthony stood on this plateau on Sunday afternoon, May 3, 1930 amidst the blinding smoke and falling embers and heard the roar of the great forest fire that came sweeping down from the Beach Pond area six miles [10 kilometers] away. “The fire roared like an express train as the giant white pines exploded into flames like torches.” Chief and Gus ran for their lives back down the trail toward Rathom Lodge (Williams and Tracy).

(There may some exaggeration going on — Beach Pond is 3 miles due north of Yawgoog, maybe 4 to the far northwest corner of the pond. Or the origin was considerably behind Beach Pond, either north or west of it and Beach Pond was used simply as a convenient land mark)

From the August, 14 2005 Providence Journal:

Byline: John Kostrzewa

Aug. 14–HOPKINTON — AFTER 75 YEARS, THE GREAT FIRE’S LESSONS LIVE ON: The Great Fire of 1930 burned a terrible chapter into the history of Camp Yawgoog.

It was a tragedy and a natural disaster.

The fire destroyed all but 50 acres of the Boy Scout camp set deep in the woods of South County. The devastation drove the birds and ground animals from the blackened and desolate landscape.

The sounds of life disappeared.

While the story of the Great Fire is a dark memory from Scouting’s past, it also is a story about hope, turning disaster into triumph and rallying for a common cause.

Mostly, it’s about Scout spirit that today still burns brightly at Yawgoog.

Here’s what happened 75 years ago this summer.

The winter and spring of 1930 were among the driest on record. The lack of snowfall and rain reduced streams to trickles. The water level in Yawgoog Pond dropped several feet.

Back then, Scouting in Rhode Island was still in its infancy. Most people had never heard of Yawgoog.

But two early Scout leaders, J. Harold “Chief” Williams and H. Cushman “Gus” Anthony, envisioned the wooded area as a future summer camp for boys and began to develop the property the new organization acquired.

They cleared some land for tents and erected a mess hall and headquarters.

During the first weekend in May 1930, Williams and Anthony were leading a training session for Scout leaders at Yawgoog when the fire warden came into camp. He warned that a fire had broken out well to the west, in Connecticut, and was spreading. He told them to be on the lookout.

Williams and Anthony smelled the smoke the next morning, as soon as they poked their heads out of their tents. They sent a team of campers and local volunteers with buckets, brooms and rakes to set up firebreaks at the edge of camp.

They walked west through the campground until they saw three huge columns of smoke on the horizon.

The fire, whipped by strong winds, approached with a terrifying roar. The thick smoke overtook them. The heat seared the buttons on their shirts.

They were forced to retreat and decided the only parts of camp they might save were the main buildings.

Anthony climbed to the roof of the lodge at the camp called Three Point and sprayed the roof and walls with water from a garden hose. Other adult leaders pushed their cars into the pond to escape the embers.

The fire swept along Yawgoog Pond and through the campground. Flames surrounded them, but Williams, Anthony and the others saved the lodge.

The next morning, the fire broke out on the far side of Yawgoog Pond, across from the camp. The fire crept along the shore and then leaped to Phillips Island. The Scout leaders watched the giant pines and white birches on the island ignite like torches.

Still, it was not over. The blaze continued the third day along Wincheck Pond at the opposite end of the camp.

When the fire finally died out, Williams and Anthony hiked through what was left of Yawgoog. Tent platforms, several cabins, even the docks had been destroyed. Charred tree trunks and rubble, still-smoldering, were visible for acres.

It was Anthony who first noticed the silence that had settled over the camp. The wildlife had fled, seeking sanctuary from the fire.

Standing in the black ashes, a foot deep in places, Williams and Anthony looked out at what was left of their vision.

“It was heartbreaking,” Williams said.

But he also saw the opportunity. He saw the chance to pull together a fledgling organization of troops scattered throughout the state to work on a common goal.

The fire had been front-page news in the daily papers. With Rhode Islanders focused on the damage, Williams put out the call and began to build a network of Scouting supporters in business, industry, government and the media. They all agreed to pitch in.

“We began at once to think of reforestation,” Williams said.

Two weeks after the fire, on an early Sunday morning, 500 Scouts and leaders from 79 troops from across Rhode Island arrived at the gates to Yawgoog. Each troop was assigned a section of camp and given an initial batch of 50 seedlings purchased from a nursery in Maine.

In a single, long day, the Scouts and volunteers planted 25,000, five-year-old white pine seedlings over 250 acres.

When the Scouts finished, a light rain blessed their work.

“Mother Nature has begun to heal the blackened wounds,” Williams said.

Fourteen months later, in July 1931, judges, politicians, business executives, editors, benefactors, Scouts and adult volunteers gathered at Camp Yawgoog.

They were there to dedicate the Bucklin Memorial, the huge, stone and wood-beamed building that serves as camp headquarters. But the talk was about the trees. The softwood pines planted by the Scouts grew among the hardwoods that had sprung back to life.

Federal forestry agents said it was the single largest reforestation effort in the history of Rhode Island — a model for others to follow.

And walking through camp, they all heard the sounds of life again.

Since the Great Fire, Yawgoog has become a familiar name to Rhode Islanders and one of the premier camps in the country.

Scouting has grown, too. But there also have been more tragedies, especially this summer.

During the national jamboree last month in Virginia that attracted 40,000 Scouts, four leaders were electrocuted setting up camp. Later, 300 Scouts there suffered heat exhaustion. In a separate incident elsewhere, a Scout from Utah was struck by lightning.

And then, Yawgoog itself was closed for 12 days after a contagious stomach virus sickened more than 100 Scouts.

Last Sunday, after a fresh scrubbing, Yawgoog reopened. About 800 Scouts spent a great week earning merit badges, making friends, learning to live as a community and having fun.

On the same trail hiked by William and Anthony to inspect the devastation from the Great Fire, the Scouts may have seen the marker for the reforestation, or heard the story told around the campfire.

It’s a pretty good lesson for Scouts and for that matter, for all of us.

John Kostrzewa, business editor, spent last week as a volunteer at Camp Yawgoog.

To see more of the The Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Providence Journal, R.I.

Another large fire was burning in the Massachusetts / Connecticut / Rhode Island border region as well.

I just found this nifty piece from the 28 April 1942 New London Day — in addition to numerous smaller brush fires in the region that were proving difficult to extinguish due to re-kindles (see this post), there were at least two very large forest fires burning in Eastern Connecticut in the days before LaCasse’s arson spree. One in Groton consumed 1,000 acres, while another in Voluntown, ignited by accident when gasoline spilled on a hot engine, consumed 2,000 acres as well as a house and several outbuildings:

It was around this time you started to see an increasing western influence in Connecticut as well as the rest of New England. Yellow shirts were far from universal even with state employees at this point, but they became more and more common.

If we turn the clock to 1990, the Interstate Fire Crew was well established but it, as it still does, depends on volunteers from outside the DEP to fill it out. Most major State Parks and State Forests maintained their own fire apparatus, and when the DEP was called to a fire the local Unit Manager and maintenance personnel would respond. I don’t know about the fulltimers, but the seasonal maintainers I worked with would simply receive on-the-job training from the fulltime tradesmen. (I worked a couple seasons during college in uniform as a “Park Aid” — i.e. security — for the DEP, my senior year I moved on and spent the summer doing conservation work for my town’s newly purchased conservation land).

The state still was operating it’s High School & UConn fire crews. These were phased out right around 1990, although I don’t know the exact year.

Yes, I said High School. In my region the closest was the Quaddick Crew out of Tourtellotte High School in Thompson, CT. These students who had received some basic training could be dismissed from classes and would meet up, if my memory is right, with the Unit Manager for Quaddick State Park and other DEP employees who would drive their apparatus. The UConn program was similarly run.

Here is a recollection from the Avon, CT Fire Department history about a youth crew from the high school their students attended in 1945:

I was a member back in 1945, at the age of 15 years old. I was on the State of Connecticut Forest Fire Crew that was made up of high school kids from the Canton High School. This crew went out on a minutes notice when the call came in on a forest fire. The state would call the high school and the principal would announce that the fire crew was excused to go out on the fire call. Our transportation was an old Packard four door with all our gear stored in a big wooden box on the rear bumper. Mrs. Fran Emigh was the driver and her husband was the State Forest Warden.

The good thing is these were organized crews, with some basic training and pre-existing leadership. It wasn’t unusual at the time for high school students to be “pressed” into service as this 1947 article from New York shows:

Even after the substantial modernization of the statutes governing Connecticut’s forest fire control laws in 2001 (Public Act 01-150), state fire control personnel retain the ability to summon the assistance of all able bodied residents between the age of 18 and 50 to duty to control forest fires.

Here’s an article discussing a fall fire that had the UConn crew respond:

These crews wound down around 1990, I’d assume from a combination of budget cuts (Governor Weicker was fighting to impose an income tax, so there was a lot of hanky panky with budgets going on(2)), increasing exposure to the “qualification system” used by the Interstate Fire Crews, and tightening up on the youth labor laws and general adoption of higher occupational safety standards. The continuing decrease in major fires from maturing forests, fewer sources of ignition (fewer cigarette smokers, better spark arrestors, less burning of yard debris and brush), more people traveling more frequently to detect fires sooner, 911, improved firefighter organization; tools; and notification systems, also likely contributed.

Since then, while fire qualified DEP employees seem to still be dispersed around the organization, the “Units” that respond to fires have also gone down. Natchaug State Forest and Pachaug State Forest remain the two units with apparatus, plus I believe the DEP Squaw Rock maintenance depot. Pachaug, in particular, is a major fire cache. The state parks at Quaddick, Mashamoquet, and Hopeville as far as I can tell no longer respond as units, although they may have individual employees respond. Fort Shantok State Park which also did fire duty no longer exists, having been turned back over to the Mohegan tribe.

Footnotes:
1) NYT article from September 15, 2002.

2) The state park I worked at in 1990 closed our more visible campground on a state highway. However we didn’t have any reduction in head count — fulltime or seasonal. It was simply the DEP political bosses ordering facilities closed to make it seem that we couldn’t afford to keep it open. As it was a rustic campground, the only marginal cost we saved was toilet paper and a weekly can full of lime for the pit toilets. The $6 or so we charged per night back then should have covered that expense.