The Interior West ― A Fire Survey

Its fires help give to the Interior West a peculiar character, fundamental both to its natural and human histories. While a general aridity unites the region, defined here as the states of Nevada, Utah, and western Colorado, its fires illuminate the ways its various parts show profoundly different landscapes, biotas, and human settlement experiences.

In this book, fire historian Stephen J. Pyne explains the relevance of the region to the national fire scene. The Interior West offered the first scientific inquiry into landscape fire in the United States, including a map of Utah burns published in 1878 as part of John Wesley Powell’s arid lands report. Then its significance faded and by the 20th century, the region had become the hole in the national donut of fire management. Pyne discusses the region’s more recent return to prominence due to fires along its front ranges; to invasive species, both exotics like cheatgrass and unleashed natives like mountain pine beetle; and to its fatality fires, notably at South Canyon in 1994.

The Interior West shows the variety of fire issues in the region and their significance to the country overall through thoughtful framing and lively essays.

Stephen J. Pyne is a historian in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He is the author of more than 30 books, mostly on wildland fire and its history but also dealing with the history of places and exploration, including The Ice, How the Canyon Became Grand, and Voyager. He is also the author of multiple volumes surveying the American fire scene, including Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America and To the Last Smoke, a suite of regional reconnaissances, all published by the University of Arizona Press.