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Prairie Fire: A Great Plains History
Prairie fires have always been a spectacular and dangerous part of the Great Plains. Nineteenth-century settlers sometimes lost their lives to uncontrolled blazes, and today ranchers such as those in the Flint Hills of Kansas manage the grasslands through controlled burning. Even small fires, overlooked by history, changed lives--destroyed someone's property, threatened someone's safety, or simply made someone's breath catch because of their astounding beauty.
Julie Courtwright, who was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie of Butler County, Kansas, knows prairie fires well. In this first comprehensive environmental history of her subject, Courtwright vividly recounts how fire--setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it--has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries. She traces the history of both natural and intentional fires from Native American practices to the current use of controlled burns as an effective land management tool, along the way sharing the personal accounts of people whose lives have been touched by fire.
The book ranges from Texas to the Dakotas and from the 1500s to modern times. It tells how Native Americans learned how to replicate the effects of natural lightning fires, thus maintaining the prairie ecosystem. Native peoples fired the prairie to aid in the hunt, and also as a weapon in war. White settlers learned from them that burns renewed the grasslands for grazing; but as more towns developed, settlers began to suppress fires-now viewed as a threat to their property and safety. Fire suppression had as dramatic an environmental impact as fire application. Suppression allowed the growth of water-wasting trees and caused a thick growth of old grass to build up over time, creating a dangerous environment for accidental fires.
Courtwright calls on a wide range of sources: diary entries and oral histories from survivors, colorful newspaper accounts, military weather records, and artifacts of popular culture from Gene Autry stories to country song lyrics to Little House on the Prairie. Through this multiplicity of voices, she shows us how prairie fires have always been a significant part of the Great Plains experience-and how each fire that burned across the prairies over hundreds of years is part of someone's life story.
By unfolding these personal narratives while looking at the bigger environmental picture, Courtwright blends poetic prose with careful scholarship to fashion a thoughtful paean to prairie fire. It will enlighten environmental and Western historians and renew a sense of wonder in the people of the Plains.
Julie Courtwright, who was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie of Butler County, Kansas, knows prairie fires well. In this first comprehensive environmental history of her subject, Courtwright vividly recounts how fire--setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it--has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries. She traces the history of both natural and intentional fires from Native American practices to the current use of controlled burns as an effective land management tool, along the way sharing the personal accounts of people whose lives have been touched by fire.
The book ranges from Texas to the Dakotas and from the 1500s to modern times. It tells how Native Americans learned how to replicate the effects of natural lightning fires, thus maintaining the prairie ecosystem. Native peoples fired the prairie to aid in the hunt, and also as a weapon in war. White settlers learned from them that burns renewed the grasslands for grazing; but as more towns developed, settlers began to suppress fires-now viewed as a threat to their property and safety. Fire suppression had as dramatic an environmental impact as fire application. Suppression allowed the growth of water-wasting trees and caused a thick growth of old grass to build up over time, creating a dangerous environment for accidental fires.
Courtwright calls on a wide range of sources: diary entries and oral histories from survivors, colorful newspaper accounts, military weather records, and artifacts of popular culture from Gene Autry stories to country song lyrics to Little House on the Prairie. Through this multiplicity of voices, she shows us how prairie fires have always been a significant part of the Great Plains experience-and how each fire that burned across the prairies over hundreds of years is part of someone's life story.
By unfolding these personal narratives while looking at the bigger environmental picture, Courtwright blends poetic prose with careful scholarship to fashion a thoughtful paean to prairie fire. It will enlighten environmental and Western historians and renew a sense of wonder in the people of the Plains.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 10, 2017
This was one book that really perked my interest as I passed it by in the library. Along with other environmental and local nature books that were on display it had an important place for the state that I was born and raised in.
Unfortunately until like the last two chapters of the book the author was lost on how she wanted to tell the story. Although it stands both on the edges of science and history it isn't presented as either nor can it be perceived as s private memoir collection. The book is too personal and meandering to be taken as a primary resource but too informative for a memoir-type telling.
Furthermore the introduction gives the reader a heads-up on how badly it is written. The majority of it was totally repetitive while even going on to repeat itself by changing some of the words in the hope that the reader wouldn't catch on to the excited sentiment that wasn't even a few paragraphs ago.
The other chunk that took up the book was that the index, notes and bibliography took up 37 pages alone. I do like a well-researched subject but along with the repetition it just seemed like padding to make the book bigger.
Parts that did interest me were the personal accounts and retellings of prairie fire events. Sadly they weren't provided in much of chronological order but appeared in places where the author was hoping to prove her point.
And although there were plenty of images used - mostly artwork - they were presented in black-and-white. So even with promises that a prairie fire is beautiful the random and as mentioned muted pieces didn't back the concept to the reader while one pics that intrigued me couldn't be found online
All in all it was a decent book that at times was informative and retaining of the legacy that settlers had to learn to face. Even though it may have been a useful gem it didn't meet its resolution while I am crossing my fingers that other referred books may provide me with a more in-depth look than was received here.
Unfortunately until like the last two chapters of the book the author was lost on how she wanted to tell the story. Although it stands both on the edges of science and history it isn't presented as either nor can it be perceived as s private memoir collection. The book is too personal and meandering to be taken as a primary resource but too informative for a memoir-type telling.
Furthermore the introduction gives the reader a heads-up on how badly it is written. The majority of it was totally repetitive while even going on to repeat itself by changing some of the words in the hope that the reader wouldn't catch on to the excited sentiment that wasn't even a few paragraphs ago.
The other chunk that took up the book was that the index, notes and bibliography took up 37 pages alone. I do like a well-researched subject but along with the repetition it just seemed like padding to make the book bigger.
Parts that did interest me were the personal accounts and retellings of prairie fire events. Sadly they weren't provided in much of chronological order but appeared in places where the author was hoping to prove her point.
And although there were plenty of images used - mostly artwork - they were presented in black-and-white. So even with promises that a prairie fire is beautiful the random and as mentioned muted pieces didn't back the concept to the reader while one pics that intrigued me couldn't be found online
All in all it was a decent book that at times was informative and retaining of the legacy that settlers had to learn to face. Even though it may have been a useful gem it didn't meet its resolution while I am crossing my fingers that other referred books may provide me with a more in-depth look than was received here.
December 7, 2011
This book was quite interesting. It was fun because she quoted a ranch manager, Wayne Rogler, who we use to give us the ok to visit Jack Spring Cave.
March 24, 2025
It was fine!
Lots of interesting historical anecdotes and not too much of the science ... but it was a little stiff and repetitive at times.
I wish there were more written about native practices, compared to the Euro American settlers, but I also understand the lack of source material when it comes to the former — massive racial genocide is a son of a bitch. They had the system figured out, it seems, and we've just been trying to relearn what they already knew.
I wonder what tribes are doing with fire in the modern day?
Lots of interesting historical anecdotes and not too much of the science ... but it was a little stiff and repetitive at times.
I wish there were more written about native practices, compared to the Euro American settlers, but I also understand the lack of source material when it comes to the former — massive racial genocide is a son of a bitch. They had the system figured out, it seems, and we've just been trying to relearn what they already knew.
I wonder what tribes are doing with fire in the modern day?
March 20, 2019
This was an excellent book. Courtwright covers the ecological history, social history, and cultural history of prairie fires in a clear and engaging manner. Highly interesting and well researched.
April 6, 2012
Reviewed this work in Plains Folk. It fills a niche in knowledge of regional life, especially the pioneer transition to the prairie environment, and it offers great detail on fire incidents up and down the plains. I thought the work could have used a bit more grounding in the science of fire--from basic pyro-physics to applied range management.
March 17, 2015
Who would have thought a person could write a 200 pages about fire. However, this book was very interesting. The author consults many, many primary sources and starts each chapter with a short story from those sources. This was an assigned reading for an American West class but was not a chore to read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews