Begun on June 8, 2002, after a US Forest Service employee started a fire at a campsite, the Hayman Fire is the fourth-largest wildfire in Colorado history. Across a wide swath of foothills between South Park and Colorado Springs, the fire burned nearly…

Ignited by lightning in early June 2012, the High Park Fire became one of the largest and most destructive wildfires in Colorado history, burning 87,415 acres along the Cache la Poudre River in the mountains west of Fort Collins. By the time it was fully…

The Last Chance Fire started on June 25, 2012, when sparks from a motorist’s flat tire set the prairie ablaze near the town of Last Chance in eastern Colorado. The fire was 100 percent contained in nearly twenty-four hours, but in that time the wildfire…

The Missionary Ridge Fire began on June 9, 2002, northeast of Durango in southwest Colorado. It burned until July 15, destroying forty-six houses and cabins and charring 73,000 acres of La Plata County forest. One firefighter died while fighting the…

The Pine Gulch Fire was ignited by a lightning strike on July 31, 2020, about eighteen miles north of Grand Junction in Garfield and Mesa Counties. Over the next month, the fire grew to encompass more than 139,000 acres, making it the third-largest…

On June 22, 2012, the Waldo Canyon Fire ignited northwest of Colorado Springs, perilously close to neighborhoods and businesses in one of the most populated areas on Colorado’s Front Range. Although local and federal agencies immediately converged on the…

Coloradans have coevolved with fire. From early indigenous people to Euro-American colonizers, to modern government agents, humans have influenced the direction of fire as much as fire has influenced the course of people. The fire-adapted landscapes we…