The Park Fire has burned over 370,000 acres in eastern Tehama County since it started on July 24, 2024. As a single wildfire, it is the second largest in California history. To date, over 425,000 acres have burned in Butte and Tehama Counties (the largest single fire was the Dixie Fire in 2021, which burned 963,309 acres in Butte, Plumas, Tehama, Lassen, and Shasta Counties).
The largest complex wildfire (multiple fires merging into one) in California history was the 2020 August Complex, when 38 separate fires combined to burn more than 1 million acres in Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Tehama, Trinity, and Shasta counties. However, the Park Fire has the unfortunate honor of being the largest wildfire caused by arson. The person allegedly responsible has been arrested.
This article is not about the debate over what should be done to prevent and fight these massive wildfires – that would far exceed the 600 words I can limit myself to. Instead, it is about a project to build a 650-mile (some say 800-mile) firebreak from Shasta County to Kern County dating back to the 1930s – the Ponderosa Way.
This project, which began in 1933 and lasted for several years, employed 16,000 men and was California’s largest Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) project. The CCC (or 3Cs) was created in 1933 during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to employ people. The minimum age was 18.
The Ponderosa Way was a 50- to 200-foot-wide firebreak with a parallel truck path (12 feet wide with 10 passing places per mile) between the lower, more flammable chaparral at the foot of the mountains and the valuable timber at higher elevations. During World War II, the U.S. Army was even interested in its potential strategic value as a north-south transport route for tanks in the event of a Japanese invasion.
Several CCC camps were established in Tehama County, including one at Panther Springs, southeast of Lyonsville, between Antelope Creek and Mill Creek. Chuck Schoendienst of Red Bluff interviewed Bus Cutler, who was 15 years old (he lied about his age) when he arrived at Panther Springs with 200 others in 1934 to build roads and firebreaks.
The wage was $25 a month, which allowed him to support his parents and siblings, and he received a monthly stipend of $5. Food, clothing and lodging were provided. The U.S. Army supervised the crews. Their first project was to lay telephone lines from the Lyonsville post office to nearby CCC camps.
But Cutler was soon transferred to the road construction crew. His first job was to use a jackhammer to drill 20-foot-deep holes and fill them with dynamite to pierce the lava rock. Often the drill bits would get stuck. The only way to free the drill rod was to blast it out. Then it had to be found, straightened and re-sharpened for reuse.
Cutler learned how to operate a bulldozer. The first time he drove a bulldozer, he rolled it over. He thought that would be the last time he would be allowed to drive a bulldozer. But the road superintendent told him not to worry because he would probably do it a few more times. Cutler recalled that this advice “gave me the confidence to operate it. I’ll never forget that. I was a 15-year-old kid scared to death.”
Cutler also described the first fire he fought: “I remember we were trying to put it out and the wind changed. We dropped our equipment and ran. We just ran to where the truck was. We waited until the wind died down a little bit and then went back. It didn’t take us long to put it out. I’m glad it wasn’t a big fire.”
