Eastern Wyoming Wildfire Nearly Burned Through Historic Fort Laramie

Historic Fort Laramie, Wyoming’s first settlement, nearly went up in flames when an out-of-control wildfire nearly burned through it the past couple of days.

Town Clerk Tristica Short got wind of something bad happening late Tuesday evening when she looked out her window across the street from the Haystack gas station along the Heartland Expressway.

The flames also got too close for comfort to the Historic military fort of the same name nearby, which reportedly came to within about a mile of the site that’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

The smell of something burning on the range to the west was wafting in the air, Short told Cowboy State Daily.

The orange glow of the wildfire and a several-mile-long plume of smoke swirling in the atmosphere was clearly visible at about 9:30 p.m. from behind their newly built garage. The old one went up in flames about a year ago and the new fire visible to the west had consumed nearly 23,100 acres north of the Heartland was giving her “PTSD.”

In a few short hours, a pair of smaller fires had merged into what’s now called the Pleasant Valley Fire.

Short said she couldn’t see the stars in the sky or much of anything else except for Wyoming Highway Patrol cars and fire trucks with flashing lights at the western edge of town.

“The entire town was fogged out,” Short said.

With a population of just over 200, Short and other emergency responders in Fort Laramie government began issuing warnings on Facebook that residents should get prepared for an evacuation.

Earlier in the day, the Pleasant Valley Fire forced the temporary evacuation of Hartville to the north of Guernsey as well as residents who lived in canyon communities located along Pleasant Valley Road and Waylon Canyon. Those areas are generally to the northeast of Guernsey.

Short heeded her own advice.

She and her boyfriend, Fort Laramie councilman Jackob Ellis, loaded up their two chickens in carriers, two cats named Toulouse and Chester (also in carriers) and Luna, their German shepherd, into the back of their 1976 orange Dodge van.

Their cat Phoenix couldn’t be found.

“It was very stressful,” Short said. “The only happy face outta the van would have been Luna!”

In their Impala, she tossed in birth certificates, clothing and the necessities that a seven-month pregnant woman needs, like toiletries and blankets. They were thinking of heading to Torrington to the south, but never did, and eventually the couple slipped back into their home in the early hours on Wednesday.

Merging Fires

Earlier Tuesday, Short had run up the Heartland, which is U.S. Highway 26, the main thoroughfare through the affected fire region, to check in on her mother. Her mother lives at the scene of the Pleasant Valley Fire that erupted Tuesday forcing the evacuations to the north.

“At that time, you could clearly see the two fires — the Haystack and the Pleasant Valley — before they merged,” she said.

But late Tuesday, fire hell struck and sent shivers down the spines of the rural communities in the border areas of Platte and Goshen counties.

“I was just waiting for the final say to evacuate. I had all our animals loaded up and two vehicles packed,” she said.

As of Thursday, the Pleasant Valley and Haystack fires had officially combined. The revised count Thursday is that the fire had burned 23,089 acres in the two-county area. Flare-ups were visible along U.S. 26 on Wednesday evening. Trees, telephone poles and fences were still burning or smoking from the intense firestorm that rushed into the area.

The movement of the fire into Fort Laramie was essentially halted by an irrigation canal that crosses U.S. 26 about 2 miles to the west of town.

Since Wednesday, the fire has pulled back from the Heartland Expressway and headed deep into the Haystack Range, said Wyoming State Forestry spokesman Jerod Delay.

He described the range as having tough terrain with boulders, steep cliffs and lots of tinder to burn, like tall grasses, sagebrush and pinyon-juniper woodlands.

The burn area in the Haystack range is between the McGinnis Pass and McCann Pass in Goshen County at about 5,000 feet in elevation. The range passes are located east of Whalen Canyon Road in the county and are located about 6 miles apart.

The southern end of the fire is about 8 miles to the northeast of Guernsey, the area where the Pleasant Valley fire first started.

Fire Size Downgraded

The size of the fire was revised downward from 28,000 acres overnight after a Multi-Mission Aircraft from Colorado’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control flew over the burn area, said Vince Welbaum, the aviation unit chief for the plane based in Centennial, Colorado.

Colorado has two Pilatus PC-12 airplanes that have the capability to use infrared sensing capabilities to map and shoot video of burn areas through smoke, Welbaum explained.

At the moment, the Wyoming Forestry Service Division isn’t showing any containment of the fire. Neither have there been any reports of injuries or destroyed homes, Delay said.

The summer is shaping up to become one of the worst in the United States.

As of Aug. 1, there are 93 large active wildfires across the U.S. that have burned more than 2.3 million acres. More than 29,100 firefighters have been assigned to fight these fires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Fires Everywhere

In Wyoming, there are a handful of fires in various stages of cleanup.

Before the Haystack and Pleasant Valley fires, the Clearwater Fire located west of Cody had been the largest spot to watch on the state’s wildfire radar.

This blaze is located on a ridgeline between Elk Fork and June Creek drainages about a mile south of Clearwater Campground and 11 miles west of Wapiti, Wyoming.

The fire is near the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park in the Shoshone National Forest.

The fire is the result of a lightning strike July 19 that caused a 1,167-acre wildfire that briefly closed the East Entrance to Yellowstone last weekend, said Ranae Pape, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service in the region.

On Aug. 1, the National Interagency Fire Center reported that the fire is not contained at all.

On Monday, the fire edged north up Elk Fork Canyon before heading toward the Highway 14/16/20 corridor. That prompted evacuations of the Big Game, Elk Fork and Wapiti campgrounds, the Pagoda summer homes and the Wapiti Ranger Station.

The fire is located in very difficult terrain that makes suppression efforts challenging, the agency reported.

The Cold Springs Fire in Converse County is completely contained. Delay said that the fire burned between 1,800 and 2,000 acres.

No structures or homes have been lost in this fire.

On July 29, hundreds of residents in tiny Upton, Wyoming, on the border of Crook and Weston counties were chased from their homes as a fast-moving grass fire threatened subdivisions along Barton Road.

Extreme winds pushed a grassfire out of Crook County directly toward Upton to the southeast. Crook County Emergency Management warned its Weston County counterparts to evacuate residents in subdivisions along Barton Road.

Those evacuation orders have since been lifted. The fire has been fully contained.

Closing Interstate 80

On Wednesday, a fire briefly closed the Interstate-80 eastbound lanes at milepost 206 near Rawlins, Delay said.

“It was from a previous fire. The wind caught it just right and rekindled it,” said Delay of the Carbon County fire.

On July 29 west of Gillette, the Campbell County Fire Department battled 50 mph winds whipping a grass fire into a frenzy that consumed mobile homes, campers and several pets over the weekend.

More than 2,000 acres in Campbell County burned from 16 fires from July 26-28, according to Fire Marshall Stuart Burnham of the Campbell County Fire Department in Gillette, Wyoming.

All of the fires have been contained, he said.

One fire resulted in 38 acres burning after a fiery plane crash July 26 killed three members of the gospel group The Nelons, The plane, which was enroute to Billings, Montana, went down 8 miles south of the Montana border in Campbell County.

A second large grass fire destroyed multiple homes and vehicles on 10 acres.

Some of the fires were the result of lightning strikes or strong winds knocking over power lines, Burnham said.

“I know a lot of Campbell County has fire restrictions in place, as well as all of northeastern Wyoming,” Burnham told Cowboy State Daily. “I would encourage people to know what those restrictions are and exercise caution.”

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.