Historic Wildfires Methodology Santa Cruz Mountains Thesis

San Jose State University
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Master's Theses
Theses and Graduate Research
Fall 2025
A Methodology to Reconstruct the Extent and Dynamics of
Historic Wildfires (1850-1950) in the Santa Cruz Mountains of
California
David Vásquez Ospina
San Jose State University
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Vásquez Ospina, David, "A Methodology to Reconstruct the Extent and Dynamics of Historic Wildfires
(1850-1950) in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California" (2025). Master's Theses. 5724.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.e7yj-77ur
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/5724
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A METHODOLOGY TO RECONSTRUCT THE EXTENT AND DYNAMICS OF
HISTORIC WILDFIRES (1850–1950) IN THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS OF
CALIFORNIA
A Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of the Department of Environmental Studies
San José State University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science
by
David Vásquez Ospina
December 2025
© 2025
David Vásquez Ospina
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled
A METHODOLOGY TO RECONSTRUCT THE EXTENT AND DYNAMICS OF
HISTORIC WILDFIRES (1850–1950) IN THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS OF
CALIFORNIA
by
David Vásquez Ospina
APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
December 2025
Dustin Mulvaney, Ph.D.
Department of Environmental Studies
Will Russell, Ph.D.
Department of Environmental Studies
Rachel E. O’Malley, Ph.D.
Department of Environmental Studies
ABSTRACT
A METHODOLOGY TO RECONSTRUCT THE EXTENT AND DYNAMICS OF
HISTORIC WILDFIRES (1850–1950) IN THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS OF
CALIFORNIA
by David Vásquez Ospina
This thesis reconstructs the extent and dynamics of historic wildfires in the Santa Cruz
Mountains of California between 1850 and 1950 using qualitative archival evidence from
historical newspapers, maps, and related documents. A systematically coded database of 225
reports, consolidated into 155 unique wildfire events, was developed to analyze temporal and
spatial patterns, ignition sources, vegetation types, suppression strategies, and impacts on
communities and infrastructure. Historical rainfall records from the Boulder Creek station
were integrated using water-year totals, three-year rolling averages, and standardized
precipitation indices to examine how multi-year dryness relates to fire occurrence and size.
Linear regressions show only weak relationships, but several large events coincide with dry
and drought-classified periods. Georeferenced reconstructions of key fires demonstrate that
multiple pre-1950 wildfires reached or exceeded contemporary “large fire” thresholds and, in
several cases, megafire-scale extents, strongly influenced by logging, slash accumulation,
broadcast burning, transportation corridors, and evolving suppression capacity. Framed
within a social-ecological perspective, the study shows how climate, land use, and
institutional responses jointly shaped fire behavior and perceived risk, and concludes with
recommendations to expand archival research, refine historical fire perimeters, integrate treering and fire-scar evidence, and incorporate long-term fire history into land-use planning and
community-based fire management in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank my thesis committee members, Professor Dustin Mulvaney, Professor
Will Russell, and Professor Rachael O'Malley, from the bottom of my heart for their help,
helpful comments, and constant support during this research process. Their guidance has
been crucial in determining both the academic rigor and the overall goal of this endeavor.
The funding that supported my time at SJSU during spring 2024, fall 2024 and spring
2025: the Water-Energy Justice Research Fellowship (USEPA 100279 – SJSURF). Research
done in partnership with Portland State University, the University of Nevada Reno, and Cal
Poly Pomona. Granted by The National Science Foundation (Award No. 2215409, HumanEnvironment and Geographical Sciences Program, Social, Behavioral and Economic
Sciences) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Grant No. RD840556,
Environmental Justice Impacts Across the Life Cycle of Energy Storage). The Viola Palmer
Memorial Scholarship for Fall 2024.
The Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies from UCSC that founded the
data collection for the project Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Research for Resilience:
Addressing California’s Climate, Conservation and Housing Crises.
I appreciate the companionship and thoughtful conversations of my cohort students. I
also appreciate the constant support and patience of my family and friends throughout this
journey.
This study is based on a draft partial dataset and research of wildfire cases originally
assembled by Professor Dustin Mulvaney in 2020 and extended, formally documented,
annotated and georeferenced by the author.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables .............................................................................................................
viii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................
ix
Introduction ................................................................................................................
Motivation and Scope ..........................................................................................
Background ..........................................................................................................
Literature Review.................................................................................................
Historical Reconstruction of Wildfires Fire Scars in Tree Rings
Analyzing .......................................................................................................
Historical Reconstruction of Wildfires by Newspaper Archives
Analyzes .........................................................................................................
Classifying Historic Fires ..............................................................................
Fire History of the Santa Cruz Mountains .....................................................
The Ecological Importance of Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains Forest ......
Drought Periods in the Santa Cruz Mountains ..............................................
Overview of Study Methods ..........................................................................
Experimental Design ......................................................................................
1
1
1
6
8
8
9
12
13
13
14
Problem Statement .....................................................................................................
Objectives ............................................................................................................
Research Questions ..............................................................................................
16
17
17
Methods......................................................................................................................
Study Site .............................................................................................................
Study Design ........................................................................................................
Data Collection ....................................................................................................
Data Analysis .......................................................................................................
Database Compilation and Event Consolidation ...........................................
Standardization of Measurements ..................................................................
Temporal Summaries and Rainfall Correlation .............................................
Classification by Size and Georeferencing of Large Fires ............................
Qualitative Analysis of Thematic Variables ..................................................
Positionality Statement ........................................................................................
18
18
19
23
25
25
25
25
28
28
29
Results ........................................................................................................................
Correlation Between Rainfall and Time Trends ..................................................
How Big and What Kind of Fire ..........................................................................
1867 - San Lorenzo River (East of Williams Landing/Davenport) ...............
1882 - Near Ben Lomond Mountain ..............................................................
1895 - Scotts Valley -Felton-Rincon-Empire Grade (September November) ...............................................................................................
1899 - Loma Prieta - Skyland - Soquel Canyon (October) ............................
31
33
45
45
46
vi
7
46
48
1904 - Big Basin - Ben Lomond - Boulder Creek (September December) ................................................................................................
1905 - Ben Lomond - Love Creek -Wrights- Soquel; Big BasinButano-Pescadero (May-November) .......................................................
1909 - Loma Prieta - Soquel Creek headwaters - Zayante - Wrights
(September) ..............................................................................................
1916 - Big Basin - Black Mountain - Ben Lomond -Love Creek
(May - September) ...................................................................................
1917 - Big Basin - Ben Lomond (June - July) ...............................................
1922 - Soquel - Bonny Doon Complex (August - September) ......................
1948 - Pine Mountain - Big Basin fire (August - September) .......................
Vegetation Types .................................................................................................
Weather Conditions .............................................................................................
Ignition Sources and Burning Practices ...............................................................
Firefighting Responses and Suppression Strategies ............................................
Economic Impacts ................................................................................................
50
53
53
54
55
56
57
58
60
61
63
64
Discussion ..................................................................................................................
Interpreting Fire Size and Evolving Perceptions .................................................
Drivers and Socio‑Ecological Dynamics .............................................................
Changing Suppression Strategies and Community Engagement .........................
Implications for Policy and Planning ...................................................................
66
67
68
70
71
Recommendations ......................................................................................................
Expand the Archival Base and Maintain the Database ........................................
Refine the Spatial Record Through Georeferencing ............................................
Integrate Ecological and Dendrochronological Data ...........................................
Link Historical Fire Pathways to Land‑Use Planning .........................................
Embed Fire History in Risk Communication and Public Education ...................
73
73
73
74
74
74
Literature Cited ..........................................................................................................
76
vii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 SPI Drought Classification ..........................................................................
27
Table 2 Fire Ignition Sources Summary ...................................................................
62
Table 3 Year Rainfall, Three-year rolling average, Standardized Precipitation
Indices (SPI), Three-year average SPI, and Drought Category. ...........
87
Table 4 Unique Fires Per Year..................................................................................
89
Table 5 Newspaper Titles and Number of Articles ..................................................
90
Table 6 Historical Rainfall. San Lorenzo Valley Water District – Boulder Creek
Station ...................................................................................................
91
Table 7 Fire Sizes and Classification ........................................................................
92
Table 8 Weather Conditions (hot, dry, high wind) ...................................................
98
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Eighty-two-year Coverage of Burning in the Anglo Regime (Greenlee &
Langenheim, 1990) ...............................................................................
11
Figure 2 Study Site....................................................................................................
19
Figure 3 Study Design. .............................................................................................
22
Figure 4 Number of Wildfires Reported in Each Year. ............................................
31
Figure 5 Number of Unique Wildfires Each Year ....................................................
32
Figure 6 Number of Wildfires Reports Reported In Each Month..............................
34
Figure 7 Unique Fires per Year and Historical Rainfall per Year and Three-year
Rolling Average Rainfall ......................................................................
35
Figure 8 Unique Fires per Year and Annual SPI and Three-year Rolling Average SPI
36
Figure 9 Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Rainfall ......................
37
Figure 10 Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Three-year Average
rainfall ...................................................................................................
37
Figure 11 Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Yearly SPI ...............
38
Figure 12 Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and 3-year Average SPI .
38
Figure 13 Fire Size (in acres) and Rainfall per Year ................................................
40
Figure 14 Correlation Between Fires Size in Acres and Rainfall .............................
41
Figure 15 Correlation Between Fires Size in Acres and 3-year Rolling Average Rain
42
ix
Figure 16 Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and Historical Rainfall per Year ...
43
Figure 17 Correlation Between Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and Rainfall
44
Figure 18 Correlation Between Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and 3-year
Rolling Avg Rainfall .............................................................................
44
Figure 19 1895 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of Wildfire ...........
48
Figure 20 1899 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of Wildfire ...........
50
Figure 21 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of the 1904 - 1905 Big
Basin Wildfire, Including “Chimney Tree” Flare-up Locations ...........
52
Figure 22 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extend of Wildfire ...................
56
x
Introduction
Motivation and Scope
In the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, recent wildfires such as the CZU Lightning
Complex Fire in 2020 raise questions about how well regional ecosystems can adapt to fire,
and how well existing fire management methods work. Such questions also need to be
answered about fires that happened before the 1970s. Although satellite images and studies
of fire scars on trees have helped us learn a lot about how fires behave, the current work
addresses a knowledge gap by utilizing archival newspaper records to reconstruct the history
of wildfires in the Santa Cruz Mountains from 1850 to 1950. The study seeks to ascertain the
frequency, magnitude, causes, and effects of historical wildfire events and aims to enhance
our understanding of the interactions among vegetation, climate, human activity, and wildfire
in this ecologically significant region, thereby informing contemporary fire control practices.
Background
The Santa Cruz Mountains are part of the California coastal fog belt (Noss, 2000), and
are home to diverse forest ecosystems, including coast redwood and mixed evergreen forests
(Gilbert et al., 2010) which are composed of species such as coast redwood (Sequoia
sempervirens), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus),
coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), bay laurel
(Umbellularia californica), bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) and knobcone pine (Pinus
attenuata). Coast redwoods are the tallest trees on Earth, with heights of up to 379 feet or
111.52 meters (Neale & Ahuja, 2002). Redwoods generally reproduce asexually from basal
sprouts (Muma et al., 2022), but they can also reproduce sexually through seeds. A
1
significant percentage, 60 to 75 %, of the seeds are not viable, however, coast redwoods are
shade-tolerant, frost-sensitive, and require abundant moisture to thrive (Olson, D. F et al.,
1990).
The wood of redwood trees is known for its weather and insect resistance, making it
highly valued for construction materials, railroad ties, outdoor decks, fences, grape stakes,
shakes and shingles, lime barrels, and interior furniture (Sahoo et al., 2021). Other trees, such
as madrone, were highly sought after by powder works for producing explosives (Parsons,
1966). Tanoak bark was especially valued by tanneries for its high tannic acid content,
essential in the leather tanning process (Cai et al., 2024). Redwood forests were also widely
used as fuel for lime kilns, one of the most important industrial activities in California during
the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Perry et al., 2007). The intense demand for these
natural resources early in California’s statehood led to widespread deforestation and land
clearing across the region by the early 1900s (Brown, 1966).
These landscapes play a crucial ecological role as habitat for species (McPherson et al.,
2017), including insects, mammals, birds, and large predators (Sillett et al., 2022), contribute
to the global carbon cycle, and help to maintain soil stability (Seney & Madej, 2015). Other
significant vegetation types in the Santa Cruz Mountains include chaparral and coastal scrub
communities (Gilbert et al., 2010), which are dominated by drought-tolerant species such as
Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum), Manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.), and Coyote brush
(Baccharis pilularis), often intermixed with various pine species. Today, extensive tracts of
forests and wildlands in the Santa Cruz Mountains are protected as federal, state, and local
parks and reserves, conservation easements, and land trusts (Bolton, 2016).
2
The ecological stability of the Santa Cruz Mountains is shaped by past patterns of
deforestation and now increasingly threatened by climate change and wildfire (MacDonald et
al., 2023). Beginning with widespread logging in the 19th and early 20th centuries, intensive
forest exploitation removed old-growth trees and disrupted frequent-fire regimes, creating
dense underbrush and fuel continuity that exacerbate fire risk under modern conditions;
recent work in Sonoma and Santa Cruz counties shows that without interventions such as
prescribed burns, accumulated litter, duff, and fine woody debris significantly increase
wildfire hazard (Katuna et al., 2024). Key environmental conditions such as temperature,
humidity, and fog patterns are being altered by climate change (Francis et al., 2020).
Additionally, wildfires, historically have been a natural and essential part of the region’s
ecosystems, as they create the necessary conditions for fire-adapted species such as coast
redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) and knobcone pines (Pinus attenuata), but the recent large
fires have posed new challenges to the resilience of these ecosystems (Mahdizadeh, 2021).
Fires are now occurring with greater frequency and intensity due to rising temperatures and
prolonged droughts (Glover et al., 2021). Additionally, fire-return intervals have been
affected by human management throughout history. A notable example is the use of
controlled burns by Indigenous communities before European colonization to manage
vegetation, clear travel routes, and cultivate plant resources (Lorimer et al., 2009). The
arrival of European settlers, logging, and fire suppression policies altered the natural fire
regime, leading to significant ecological changes (Greenlee & Langenheim, 1990). One of
the most significant wildfire events in recent history was the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in
August 2020. This fire burned almost 86,000 acres (34,802.97 hectares) across Santa Cruz
3
and San Mateo counties (Crockett, 2022), and led to the evacuation of more than 77,000
residents, and destroyed over 1,400 structures. The CZU fire severely damaged Big Basin
Redwoods State Park, California’s oldest state park, and it was described as the most costly
and destructive wildfire in Santa Cruz County in over a century (Santa Cruz County Civil
Grand Jury, 2022), underscoring the urgent need to better understand historical wildfire
patterns and their implications for modern fire management strategies.
Scientists have a hard time studying wildfires that happened a long time ago because of a
scarcity of long-term data. Much of the current data on wildfire history is derived from
satellite imagery analyses, which only dates back to 1972 (Chuvieco et al., 2019). In
California , the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) dataset
includes fire perimeters dating back to 1878, making it one of the earliest spatially explicit
fire records in California (Syphard & Keeley, 2016). In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the 1948
Pine Mountain Fire is widely recognized as the oldest fire event for which a spatial perimeter
map is available in the region (Stephens et al., 2004). Tree-ring analyses and fire scars yield
estimates of fire-return intervals. However, these studies demonstrate considerable variability
and rarely represent the social context of fire events; in the Santa Cruz Mountains, fire-return
intervals reconstructed through fire scars studies and historical records, range from 12 to 50
years (Lorimer et al., 2009), 45 years for Big Basin Redwoods State Park (Jones & Russell,
2015), which shows differences depending on location and forest type (Stephens & Fry,
2005). Our understanding of fire patterns prior to the era of remote sensing thus contains
substantial gaps.
4
To address these gaps and complement previous efforts, this study builds on the work of
Jason M. Greenlee. In his 1983 master’s thesis, Greenlee reconstructed fire history in the
region using historical newspapers. Later, in collaboration with Jean H. Langenheim, he
integrated archival fire records, forestry journals, and ecological observations to reconstruct
fire regimes in the Santa Cruz Mountains and introduced the “Anglo Period” (1848–1929) as
a typology shaped by settler expansion and industrial land use (Greenlee & Langenheim,
1990). This study revisits and extends their work by incorporating more comprehensive
newspaper archives spanning 1850 to 1950 and using them to locate fire events that may
have been underreported or previously overlooked. It also complements dendrochronological
studies which reconstructed fire-return intervals based on tree-ring scars like those of
Stephens and Fry (2005) and Jones and Russell (2015). Newspapers provide critical insights
into past fire events, documenting their frequency, size, and impact, as well as evolving fire
management strategies. These historical sources could also reflect changes and adaptation in
society fire suppression practices, public perceptions of fire risk, and the role of policy in
facing modern wildfire challenges. This study seeks to uncover evidence of wildfires that
may have surpassed the CZU Fire in terms of burned area, duration, structural damage, or
ecological impact by analyzing historical reports. This fire history is crucial in reassessing
long-term wildfire trends and understanding whether recent fire severity is unprecedented or
part of a historical pattern of large fires in the region.
This research seeks to reconstruct the temporal and spatial extent of historic wildfires by
systematically reviewing archival newspaper reports from 1850 to 1950 and creating a
comprehensive database of wildfire events in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Further
5
classification of these wildfires uncovered through this archival work with use widely
accepted typologies. Researchers classify large wildfires as those that are at least 100 acres
(40.47 hectares) in timber fuels or 300 acres (121.41 hectares) in grass fuels (NIFC, 2024),
while megafires are those that are more than 24,710 acres (10,000 hectares) (Linley et al.,
2022). These categories are generally meant to represent an extensive fire for counting
purpose to document any changes in fire extent over time. While widely used and accepted,
these classifications are not always agreed upon and depend on the situation and extent of
area considered (for example, a 20,000-acre fire on a 22,000-acre island could never be
classified as a megafire, even though it could be warranted given the extent of coverage).
This study will evaluate how qualitative archival evidence can reveal spatial and temporal
fire patterns, their connections with drought and rainfall variability, and the influence of
human activities such as logging, land-use change, and suppression practices. The research
also examines how mapping fire perimeters using GIS contributes to the classification of
historic wildfires as large or megafires and what these classifications reveal about long-term
regional fire dynamics. By integrating climatic, ecological, and social dimensions, this
project not only fills a critical gap in the wildfire history of the Santa Cruz Mountains but
also offers insights for contemporary fire management and planning by illustrating how
climate, vegetation, and human actions have interacted over time.
Literature Review
Reconstructing fire histories in forest ecosystems is essential for understanding long-term
patterns of wildfire occurrences. Researchers have used approaches such as analyzing fire
6
scars preserved in tree rings and reviewing historical documents, including newspaper
archives.
Historical Reconstruction of Wildfires Fire Scars in Tree Rings Analyzing
Tree ring analysis and soil studies have been used worldwide to study fire history. On the
Central Coast of Australia, Mooney and Maltby (2006) combined fire-scar and sedimentary
macroscopic charcoal analysis to reconstruct the fire history of a coastal swamp catchment
and describe fire activity from the Holocene and its relation to the increase of human
population in the area (Mooney & Maltby, 2006). In Central Mongolia, researchers
reconstructed fire history over the past 450 years using fire scars, finding that fire
occurrences were influenced by human activities and by climate factors (Hessl et al., 2012).
An important effort in the western Patagonia, Chile, combined tree ring scar data,
sedimentary charcoal analyses, and the interpretation of El Niño Southern Oscillation
(ENSO), revealing wildfire activity from the Holocene (Holz et al., 2012). In Mexico,
researchers analyzed fire scars in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve and found the
impacts of fire suppression practices in coniferous forests (Sáenz-Ceja & Pérez-Salicrup,
2019).
For Santa Cruz Maintains Forests, in California, fire scars on cross-sections from stumps,
downed logs, fallen trees, and live trees were analyzed to estimate fire-return intervals,
showing variation depending on the study location. For Big Basin Redwoods State Park,
Jones and Russell (2015) estimated a fire-return interval of 45.4 years (Jones & Russell,
2015), while Lorimer et al. (2009) reported an interval of 50 years for the same area. In
contrast, research conducted on the eastern side of the northern Santa Cruz Mountains, in San
7
Mateo County, found significantly shorter intervals, ranging from 12.4 to 16.3 years
(Stephens & Fry, 2005).
Historical Reconstruction of Wildfires by Newspaper Archives Analyzes
Historical newspapers are a valuable source for reconstructing wildfire histories and
understanding society’s responses to fire events across different regions of the world. In
Ireland, in Donegal County, the history of wildfires from 1903 to 2019 was reconstructed
using digitized newspaper archives. Revealing that wildfires have been a recurring hazard in
the region. The study was useful for analyzing policies related to their management (Jeffers,
2021). The catastrophic Ash Wednesday bushfires, a fire that happened in Australia in 1983,
were analyzed by reviewing the newspaper coverage of the event and provided tools for the
community to prepare for future events of this type (McKay, 1983). In the USA, the book
Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Pyne, 1982) reconstructed a
comprehensive history of fire in the country based on historical and literary sources,
including newspaper revision, and ecological, cultural, and political aspects. Similarly, in the
U.S, utilizing both fire scar data and historical newspaper reviewing, fire history in Catoctin
Mountain Park, Maryland, was reconstructed for a period between 1702 and 1951, which led
to identifying a total of 58 fires during that period and identifying regeneration features on
pines and oaks (Howard et al., 2021).
Classifying Historic Fires
To prepare for classifying historic fires, it is useful to describe the existence of phrases
such as “large fire” and “megafire,” as well as the controversial nature of their definitions.
Fire managers and academics have long categorized fires by size and effects to facilitate
8
comparisons over time and space, and to utilize this information to inform fire suppression
and post-fire recovery efforts. It is important to have clear, context-appropriate definitions for
large fires and megafires in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The U.S. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), in its “Interagency Standards for Fire
and Fire Aviation Operations,” commonly known as the “Red Book,” defines a large fire as
one that is 100 acres (40.47 ha) or larger in timber fuel types, or 300 acres (121.41 ha) or
larger in grass fuel types (NIFC, 2024), but also, studies in Santa Cruz mountains, large fires
have been describe as those formed by a group of small ones (Greenlee & Langenheim,
1990).
While large fires are typically categorized based on size, megafires are traditionally
defined as those exceeding 10,000 hectares (24,710.54 acre) (Linley et al., 2022). However,
the concept of megafires has also evolved to consider factors such as growth rate and societal
impacts (Balch et al., 2024). And, some others argue that mega-fire is “an ambiguous and
emotive term” generated by recent news media more than scientific context (Stoof et al.,
2024). All of this indicates that the perception and classification of megafires are highly
context dependent. For instance, a fire considered “mega” in one region due to its size may
not be classified the same way elsewhere, where factors like fire duration, intensity, and
socio-economic impacts.
Fire History of the Santa Cruz Mountains
The history of wildfire occurrences in the Santa Cruz Mountains has been attempted to be
reconstructed by archaeologists and anthropologists, with the collaboration of its traditional
inhabitants, currently represented by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (Rizzo-Martinez, 2022),
9
documenting long-term Indigenous stewardship and cultural burning along the central coast,
including the Awaswas-speaking groups (e.g., Uypi, Cotoni). Burning in coastal prairies over
at least 1,200 years was particularly an indigenous landscape stewardship practice (Lightfoot
et al., 2021). Before colonization, native Americans intentionally used fire to clear vegetation
near villages and travel routes and cultivate plants for food and basketry materials (Lorimer
et al., 2009). During the Spanish and Mexican periods, tree and brush clearing using fire
were common practices to improve livestock forage (Jones & Russell, 2015), and fire
suppression started to be established in the 20th century.
A reconstruction of wildfires in Big Basin State Park for the Anglo era, also called the
Anglo regime (see Figure 1), between 1847 and 1929, was made by reviewing newspapers
for Jason M. Greenlee in his master's thesis in 1983 (Greenlee, 1983). Years later, the
integration of fire maps, historical fire records, and fire journals allowed researchers Jason
M. Greenlee and Jean H. Langenheim to reconstruct historical patterns and ecological data
(Greenlee & Langenheim, 1990). This study reported two lightning-caused fires in 1924 and
1930, each reaching at least 4 hectares (10 acres), and another in 1948 that burned 8,000
hectares (15,893 acres). Since the 1930s, major wildfires have been recorded by public
officials as documented in aerial photography and later satellite imagery. Notable events
include the 1948 Pine Mountain fire, another fire in 1961, which burned 9,067 acres (3,670
hectares); the 1985 Lexington Fire, which covered 13,122 acres (5,310 hectares); and the
2009 Lockheed Fire, which spanned 7,818 acres (3,163 hectares).
10
Figure 1
Eighty-two-year Coverage of Burning in the Anglo Regime (Greenlee & Langenheim, 1990)
Eighty-two-year Coverage of Burning in the Anglo Regime
Note. Reproduced from “Historic fire regimes and their relation to vegetation patterns in the Monterey Bay
area of California,” by Greenlee & Langenheim, 1990.
The CZU Lightning Complex Fire in August 2020 became the most destructive wildfire
in Santa Cruz County in over a century, as noted in the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury
Report on Reducing Community Risks from Wildfire in 2022 (Santa Cruz County Civil
Grand Jury, 2022). This fire burned approximately 86,000 acres (34,800 hectares) across
Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties (Crockett, 2022), resulting in the evacuation of more
than 77,000 residents and the destruction of nearly 1,000 structures, including over 900
homes. The fire also impacted Big Basin Redwoods State Park, where more than 97% of its
11
7,366 ha (18,200 acres) forest area was on fire. Fire recovery has been the subject of study
within the redwood ecosystems of the Santa Cruz Mountains (Lazzeri-Aerts & Russell,
2014); the CZU Lightning Complex Fire has also led to renewed scientific interest.
Researchers found that a few months after, coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens)
responded to the fire with a survival rate of 95%, showing their remarkable resilience
compared to other species like tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) or coast live oak
(Quercus agrifolia) (Mahdizadeh, 2021). Also, researchers from Northern Arizona
University (NAU) demonstrated how this species was resilient by analyzing carbon reserves
stored for over 50 years in these forests, some of which were inactive for centuries and
produced new growth (Peltier et al., 2023). Added to this, prescribed fires executed in this
same area after the CZU were analyzed, which also showed more seedling regeneration and
higher canopy (Biblin et al., 2025).
The Ecological Importance of Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains Forest
Fire has played an essential ecological role in redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests
and mixed evergreen forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Wildfires help to create the
conditions necessary for successful forest regeneration (Ramage et al., 2010) and play a vital
role for species such as the Knobcone pine (Pinus attenuata), enabling it to open and disperse
its seeds when exposed to high temperatures (Fry et al., 2012). Furthermore, fire, along with
stream erosion and falling tree roots, promotes the nitrogen cycle and mineral availability,
which in turn stimulates seed germination and forest regeneration (Vale, 1975).
The occurrence of fire is naturally influenced by climatic gradients, including increasing
summer temperatures, decreasing humidity, reduced winter precipitation, and lightning
12
strikes (Lorimer et al., 2009). Different from natural factors, human activities have
historically played a significant role in shaping fire regimes.
Drought Periods in the Santa Cruz Mountains
Periods of drought have profoundly shaped the wildfire history of the Santa Cruz
Mountains. One of the earliest well-documented post-statehood droughts occurred in the
mid-to-late 1860s, when statewide deficits set the stage for heightened fire susceptibility
(Herweijer, 2007). In the early 1930s, multi-year dryness intensified across western North
America (Cook et al., 2009), known as the North American “Dust Bowl” drought, and 1934
stands out as the most severe single-year drought of the last millennium (Cook et al., 2014).
Research has also described the early twentieth century in California as a time of dry
episodes that were reinforced by persistent high-pressure ridging, anomalously warm
temperatures, and suppressed precipitation, conditions that collectively produce landscapes
primed for ignition and rapid spread (MacDonald et al., 2023).
Overview of Study Methods
Forests undergo sociocultural and historical characterizations in various contexts to
reveal their multiple uses and ecological services (Dung & Webb, 2008). This historically
and sociocultural oriented approach involves the review of documentary sources, such as
historical newspaper archives dating back to the 1800s, stored in digital libraries, as well as
the chronological reconstruction of fire events. This method enables the identification and
analysis of reported wildfires, including their characteristics, intensities, and the
environmental conditions under which they occurred. Additionally, it allows for the
13
examination of climatic influences and the broader ecological effects of these fires, such as
erosion and changes in runoff patterns.
Focusing on the forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, this research aims to
identify significant wildfires preceding the CZU Lightning Complex Fire of 2020 by utilizing
historical newspaper archives and comparing precipitation data. This historical data provides
valuable insights into the frequency, intensity, and management of wildfires before the
advent of modern monitoring technologies, such as satellite imagery and detailed fire
incident reporting. Newspapers serve as detailed accounts of past fire events, shedding light
on how communities and ecosystems responded to wildfires over time.
Moreover, historical newspapers offer a unique perspective on the cultural and society
dimensions of wildfires. They document public perceptions of fire risks, evolving fire
suppression policies, and shifting attitudes toward fire management at different historical
periods. Additionally, they help bridge gaps in historical fire data by recording events that
occurred prior to the implementation of satellite-based monitoring and contemporary fire
detection systems. Furthermore, newspaper archives reveal the evolution of fire management
strategies, illustrating changes in firefighting techniques, advancements in equipment, and
policy developments that are critical to understanding the progression of wildfire
management practices.
Experimental Design
Through this study, I aim to identify and document historical wildfires in the Santa Cruz
Mountains from 1850 to 1950. To achieve this, a documentary review was be conducted
using historical newspaper archives available in the California Digital Newspaper Collection,
14
maintained by the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research at the University of
California, Riverside.
Wildfire data collected was chronologically organized in an Excel database, which
included the following key attributes: year, month, and day of the wildfire event; wildfire
name (if recorded); size (in acres, square miles, or any available measurement); number of
firefighters reported, resources used and affected during suppression efforts; ignition source
(if known), type and extent of damage caused, estimated economic cost of the fire; fire
behavior characteristics; weather conditions during the fire event; geographical location,
categorized by place names, watersheds, or creeks; direct link to the newspaper article for
reference. This systematic approach facilitates a comprehensive reconstruction of wildfire
history in the Santa Cruz Mountains, allowing for in-depth analysis of fire patterns,
suppression strategies, and environmental impacts over time.
15
Problem Statement
The forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains include a variety of vegetation types, including
Coast redwood forests (Sequoia sempervirens), which extend along the northern California
coast into southern Oregon, as well as mixed evergreen forests and other significant
vegetation types such as chaparral and coastal scrub communities (Gilbert et al., 2010),
which are dominated by drought-tolerant species. These ecosystems are currently
experiencing shifts in moisture availability, fog patterns (Francis et al., 2020), and increased
exposure to heat waves and rising temperatures due to climate change (Glover et al., 2021).
Wildfires have historically played a crucial role in shaping redwood forest ecology, creating
conditions that promote healthy forest composition (Ramage et al., 2010). However,
comprehensive data on large fires has only been available since the 1970s with the analysis
of satellite imagery. While these images provide valuable insights, they do not capture the
long-term historical patterns of wildfire activity in the region.
To bridge this gap, reconstructing wildfire history by analyzing archival newspapers from
1850 to 1950 can help us develop a comprehensive understanding of wildfire patterns in the
Santa Cruz Mountains for this crucial period in the state’s colonial history. A detailed
analysis of historical fires helps to reveal how extractive industries like timber harvesting and
fuel wood, fire suppression strategies and policies, and land management practices and
development patterns have influenced modern wildfire risks. Furthermore, integrating
historical records with modern fire science provides critical insights for developing effective
fire mitigation strategies and enhancing ecological resilience. By incorporating long-term fire
history into contemporary policy discussions, land managers and policymakers can
16
implement more informed strategies to protect both human communities and natural
ecosystems from the increasing threat of megafires.
Objectives
The objective of this project is to reconstruct the wildfire history of the Santa Cruz
Mountains from 1850 to 1950 by conducting a documentary analysis of historical
newspapers and other archival materials.
Research Questions
RQ1: What does qualitative archival evidence reveal about the temporal and spatial
extent of wildfires in the Santa Cruz Mountains between 1850 and 1950?
RQ1a: How did periods of prolonged drought, seasonal weather patterns and annual
rainfall correlate with wildfire occurrences and sizes in the Santa Cruz
Mountains?
RQ1b: How do archival records describe the relationship between logging, land use
practices, and wildfire/forest fire activity in the region?
RQ1c: To what extent can archival records be used to reconstruct historical fire
ignition sources, fire-fighting resources, and suppression and fuel management
practices in the Santa Cruz Mountains?
RQ1d: How does mapping archival fire perimeters in GIS enable classification of
Santa Cruz Mountains wildfires as “large” or “megafire,” and what patterns
does this classification reveal?
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Methods
Study Site
The Santa Cruz Mountains are located among Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, and San Mateo
counties in California. The Santa Cruz Mountains are part of the California coastal fog belt
(Noss, 2000), and are home to diverse forest ecosystems, including coast redwood and mixed
evergreen forests (Gilbert et al., 2010) which are composed of species such as coast redwood
(Sequoia sempervirens), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), tanoak (Notholithocarpus
densiflorus), coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), bay
laurel (Umbellularia californica), bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) and knobcone pine
(Pinus attenuata). This study focuses on the central and southern portions of the range,
particularly the Santa Cruz Mountains bioregion 1 extending from the San Mateo County
borderlands into Santa Cruz County (see Figure 2). While the range technically extends into
Santa Clara County, most fire reports used in this study were verified to originate from
within the mountainous bioregion rather than the Santa Clara Valley. All historical fire data
were cross-referenced with geographical features to ensure their location within the mountain
range. Although some newspapers and historical records reference events in the broader tricounty region, only those clearly located in the Santa Cruz Mountains were included in the
database.
1
Santa Cruz Mountain Bioregional Council /www.scmbc.org/map-of-bioregion
18
Figure 2
Study Site.
Study Site
Study Design
The research design aimed to use archival information to reconstruct a history of large
fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains and to examine their temporal, spatial, and social
dimensions. Figure 3 shows the flow diagram of the study design. The main goal was to
explore how qualitative archival records, especially historical newspaper reports, can be
19
systematically used to document wildfire occurrence, extent, and related environmental
conditions from 1850 to 1950. Beyond documenting individual events, the study also sought
to identify patterns linking fire activity to drought conditions and human land-use practices,
complementing ecological studies of fire-return intervals and suppression history in the
region.
This research followed a qualitative archival approach based on document review. Fire
reports were extracted from digitized newspaper archives and secondary historical materials
to build a database of wildfire events in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The primary source was
the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC), hosted by the Center for
Bibliographical Studies & Research at the University of California, Riverside. Founded in
2005, the CDNC is an open-access repository containing over 1.5 million issues and 23
million digitized newspaper pages dating back to 1846. The collection is searchable by title,
date, county, and keyword, which makes it suitable for retrieving wildfire records. Publicly
available articles are accessible online at https://cdnc.ucr.edu and are indexed under the
hashtag #CZUCalFire to support further public research.
To locate relevant articles, keyword searches were conducted using combinations such as
forest fire Santa Cruz, forest blaze, wood fire, burned area, Big Basin, and blaze Santa Cruz .
Search results were refined by date ranges and geographic filters specific to the Santa Cruz
Mountains. Duplicate and unrelated items were manually excluded, and cross-referencing
among newspapers was used to verify consistency.
Each article was coded for variables including date, location, ignition source, vegetation
type, weather conditions, firefighting response, reported size, and estimated damages.
20
Reports with overlapping dates and geographic descriptions were grouped to identify unique
fires. The final dataset includes fire reports representing and distinct unique wildfire events.
Newspaper accounts often contained eyewitness descriptions, official statements, and
editorials that revealed spatial information about wildfires. These narratives provided
qualitative data on weather conditions, wind and fire direction, vegetation types burned,
types of land use and business activities, economic loss and damages, and the causes of
wildfire. Both descriptive and correlational analyses were performed to explore patterns in
time, relationships with drought, and changes in fire size and frequency. Large fires were
defined as those burning at least 100 acres in timber or 300 acres in grass fuels, while
megafires were those exceeding 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres), following the standards of
the NIFC (2024) and Linley et al. (2022).
By integrating historical, climatic, and social evidence, this study reconstructed the
spatial and temporal extent of fires, identified environmental and human factors influencing
their occurrence, and contributed to a broader understanding of the long-term fire regime in
the Santa Cruz Mountains.
21
Figure 3
Study Design.
Study Design
22
Data Collection
Data was mainly gathered from the newspaper archive of the California Digital
Newspaper Collection of the Center of Bibliographical Studies and Research. Also, from
America's Historical Newspapers, which are a fully searchable database that offers more than
700 historical American newspapers from the period 1690 through 1900. Additionally, the
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
These newspaper archives are publicly available, and wildfire-related articles from the
Santa Cruz Mountains were located through custom searches using keywords such as “forest
fire Santa Cruz,” “fire blaze,” and “wildfire.” To facilitate retrieval and future reference, each
article was marked with a custom tag, #czucalfire was applied, which can be used within the
CDNC (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/) to locate digitized newspaper articles related to wildfires in the
Santa Cruz Mountains region.
To georeference historical wildfires reported in archival newspapers, this study employed
a combination of modern digital tools and historical cartographic materials. ArcGIS Online,
Google Maps, and Google Earth were used to spatially locate fire events based on place
names, distances, and topographic clues reported in the articles. These tools enabled
alignment of historical locations with contemporary geographic coordinates. To support this
effort, historical property ownership maps were especially valuable, particularly the Official
Map of Santa Cruz County, California from 1889 (Hatch, 1889). This map depicts ranch
boundaries, early mills, creeks, and roads that were frequently referenced in newspaper
reports but are no longer in common usage. The map was essential for identifying nowobscure locations such as timber mills and other properties which were prominent sites
23
during fire events in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Additional spatial context was
informed by conversations with local experts familiar with the region’s historical geography,
most notably Professor Dustin Mulvaney, and by collaborative work with the Center for
Critical Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES) at UC Santa Cruz for the project Wildland
Urban Interface (WUI) Research for Resilience: Addressing California’s Climate,
Conservation & Housing Crises.
This research also researched patterns of wildfires and precipitation and drought. Rainfall
data were primarily derived from the San Lorenzo Valley Water District’s Boulder Creek
station, located at approximately 37.126° N, –122.121° W, at an elevation of 479 ft (146 m),
which offers the longest continuous record available in the Santa Cruz Mountains, beginning
in 1888–89. Given that the wildfire records found for this study range from 1850 to 1950, the
Boulder Creek dataset was selected due to its spatial centrality within the study site and
temporal alignment with the historical period of interest. Although other stations exist (e.g.,
Ben Lomond, Lockheed, Santa Cruz), most either post-date 1950 or contain incomplete
records for the earlier decades. Therefore, this study uses Boulder Creek data as a proxy for
regional rainfall variability, while acknowledging that it may not fully capture microclimatic
variation across the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The information was organized as a database in an Excel file including: year, month, and
day of the wildfire event; wildfire name (if recorded); size in acres, square miles, linear
descriptions, or any described measurement in the reports; number of people reported to be
fighting the fire, resources used and affected during suppression efforts; ignition source (if
known); type and extent of damage caused, estimated economic cost of the fire; fire behavior
24
characteristics; weather conditions during the fire event; geographical location (categorized
by place names, watersheds, or creeks); forest/ecosystem affected; properties affected (if
mentioned) and the direct link to the newspaper article for reference questionnaire.
Data Analysis
To address the research questions, the following analytical approaches were used:
Database Compilation and Event Consolidation
The data for this thesis were compiled by extracting 225 wildfire reports from
newspapers and archival sources spanning 1850–1950. Each record included the date,
general location, reported size (in acres, square miles, or linear miles), ignition cause (when
given), fuel type, weather description, suppression details, and any reported damages.
Because multiple articles sometimes described the same incident, each report was reviewed
by date and location to identify unique fires; this process yielded 155 unique events, which
were used for subsequent analyses.
Standardization of Measurements
To enable comparisons across sources, all reported fire areas were converted to acres
(1 square mile = 640 acres) and all linear extents to miles. When only linear distance was
provided (e.g., “three miles of front”), no area was inferred; such events were treated
separately in the analysis of fire length.
Temporal Summaries and Rainfall Correlation
All fire records were aligned to water years (WY; October 1–September 30). For each
water year from 1889–1950 (with a data gap in 1891), I aggregated the number of unique
fires (including years with zero reports) to avoid selection bias. Historical precipitation totals
25
for each water year were taken from the San Lorenzo Valley Water District – Boulder Creek
station (see Table 6, Appendix D).
To examine how fire activity co-varied with rainfall, I implemented three complementary
approaches:
Annual rainfall and rolling averages
•
Annual WY rainfall (inches) were paired with annual unique-fire counts.
•
Three-year rolling mean of WY rainfall (the mean of WY t, t − 1, and t − 2; computed
only where the two prior years exist) were computed.
•
Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions were ran and produced scatterplots with
trendlines for:
a. Fires vs. annual rainfall, and
b. Fires vs. 3-year rolling rainfall.
Also, produced overlay charts with bars (fires) and lines (rainfall and the 3-year mean) to
visualize co-variation.
Standardized precipitation (SPI-like) index
•
Each year’s total was standardized to a site-specific SPI-score (see equation 1.1):
𝑃 −𝜇
𝑆𝑃𝐼𝑍 = 𝑡𝜎
(1.1)
Where Pt is water year (WY) precipitation in year t, and µ and 𝜎 are the mean and
standard deviation over 1889–1950 (excluding 1891). This SPIz serves as an SPI metric:
values < 0 indicate drier-than-average years; values > 0 indicate wetter-than-average years.
26
•
Three-year mean SPI (average of years t, t − 1, t − 2) was computed to capture multiyear moisture deficits.
Using SPI_z, each water was categorized into drought/wetness categories (see Table 1)
following the conventional SPI thresholds (McKee et al., 1993):
Table 1
SPI Drought Classification
SPI Drought Classification
≤ −2.0: Extreme drought
−1.99 to −1.5: Severe drought
−1.49 to −1.0: Moderate drought
−0.99 to +0.0: Mild drought
•
OLS regressions were run and produced scatterplots with trendlines for:
c. Fires vs. annual SPIz, and
d. Fires vs. 3-year mean SPIz.
Fire size relationships
•
Where newspapers reported area burned, units were converted all to acres without
inferring missing areas; analyses use the as-reported values (e.g., acres or square
miles converted to acres).
•
The burned area against annual rainfall and 3-year rolling rainfall were regressed, and
produced corresponding plots.
Across all analyses, figures display the regression trendline and equation for
transparency. Assumptions (e.g., linearity, independence) and known limitations (archival
variability, missing WY 1891) are noted in the Discussion.
27
Classification by Size and Georeferencing of Large Fires
Each unique event was classified as “large” or “mega” by applying established
thresholds: a large fire was defined as ≥ 100 acres (40.47 ha) or larger in timber fuels or
≥ 300 acres (121.41 ha) in grass fuels (NIFC), and a megafire was defined as
≥ 10 000 hectares (~ 24 710 acres) (Linley et al., 2022).
Because many historical reports provided only qualitative or linear descriptions of extent,
and in its narrative size and effect were predominant selected events, 1895, 1899, 1904–05,
and 1917, were georeferenced using historical property maps, place names, and other places
were identified consulting collaborators with local expertise on the history of the region.
Points were entered into ArcGIS to construct polygons that approximate the footprint of each
major fire (unique fire). Historical property ownership maps were especially valuable,
particularly the Official Map of Santa Cruz County, California from 1889 (Hatch, 1889). and
Official Map of Santa Cruz County, California from 1906 (Punnett Brothers, 1906). These
polygons allowed calculation of total hectares and comparison of burn extents across events.
Qualitative Analysis of Thematic Variables
To analyze vegetation, ignition sources, suppression methods, and impacts, the database
was filtered by relevant fields and listed by common categories. Vegetation types were
grouped into broad classes: redwood/second-growth, mixed evergreen, chaparral/brush,
grass/pasture, based on the language used in the reports. Ignition causes were categorized
and summarized into Unknown/NS, Campfire, Locomotive or equipment sparks, Brush or
chaparral burns, Arson/incendiary, Lightning, Smoking materials, Hunting, Spontaneous
combustion, and Slash burning. A summary table lists the number and percentage of fires in
28
each category. Weather descriptions were compiled to record instances of “very low
humidity” (e.g., 12 %), extreme heat (e.g., “100 °F”), prolonged drought (“143 days without
rainfall”), and high winds (“the heaviest winds of the year”). Information on suppression
tactics and fire-fighting responses (e.g., use of wet sacks, backfiring, lookouts, Civilian
Conservation Corps crews, aircraft) was also cataloged. Cross-referencing multiple reports
for the same incident helped resolve discrepancies and identify missing data.
Taken together, these analytical steps, database compilation, standardization of units,
temporal summarization, regression analysis, size classification with georeferencing, and
thematic coding, provide a robust framework for reconstructing the history of wildfires in the
Santa Cruz Mountains and interpreting the interplay of climate, land use, ignition sources,
and human response across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Positionality Statement
I am a sanitation engineer by title, but most of my career has been spent working on
environmental issues. This training has given me the technical skills to look at ecosystems,
but it has also taught me that numbers and models don't tell the whole story. I grew up in
Medellín, Colombia, and recently moved to California to pursue graduate studies. Getting an
education in the U.S. has taken a lot of mental and emotional work. These sacrifices come
from my strong love for the environment and my belief that understanding local ecosystems
is important for the whole world.
As someone who feels both like an insider and an outsider in California's forests, I
approach the redwood landscape with humility, curiosity, and a desire to connect local
histories to community well-being. My view is shaped by more than just where I live. I
29
learned to see nature as a partner instead of just a pretty place to look at because I grew up in
an area where nature is important for making a living. In my professional work, I have
researched how infrastructure projects affect communities and natural ecosystems. This
technical knowledge now combines with a historical project that depends on qualitative
sources. Looking into newspapers, archives, and community stories has made me realize that
people bring their own biases to the creation of data.
My Latin American background and love of the environment make me pay attention to
stories that aren't part of the mainstream and to the long history of community practices and
dynamics that have shaped fire regimes in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I know that my
background in engineering might make me prefer some types of evidence over others. To
combat this, I have endeavored to prioritize diverse perspectives and to regard local
knowledge with equal esteem as scientific data.
Studying in a country like the United States has also shown me how lucky I am to be able
to do academic research. I have had access to digital archives, libraries, brilliant professors,
and expert communities that many people in my home country can't get to. This thesis is, in
part, an effort to honor that privilege by producing research that matters beyond my degree. I
hope that by looking at historical wildfires through newspaper articles, making the
information available, I can help communities that are becoming more vulnerable to fire plan
for resilience. My goal is not only to write an academic paper, but also to make a resource
that helps conservation efforts, informs policy, and connects science with the real-life
experiences of people who live in these territories.
30
Results
The database created for this thesis included 225 reports of wildfires from newspapers
and archives from 1850 to 1950. Figure 4 shows number of wildfire reports per year. When
reviewing each of the reports by date, location, and reported characteristics, 155 unique fires
were found.
Figure 4
Number of Wildfires Reported in Each Year.
Number of Wildfires Reported in Each Year
Figure 5 shows number of unique fires per year (see Table 4 Appendix B).
31
Figure 5
Number of Unique Wildfires Each Year
Number of Unique Wildfires Each Year
Different to qualitative description using journalistic narrative, 125 of these reports
reported any size in using miles for length or square miles or acres for area (see Table 7
Appendix E) and 51 of them described a possible cause of ignition (see Table 2 in the
Ignition sources and burning practices section). These records were compiled from 196
articles published in 41 distinct newspapers (see Table 5 in Appendix C) and constitute the
inaugural systematic effort to chronicle wildfire history in the Santa Cruz Mountains local
newspapers, especially the Santa Cruz Evening News (42 articles) and the Santa Cruz
Sentinel (32 articles), make up most of the coverage. This indicates that most of the stories
were based on first-hand accounts from people who lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The
32
dataset keeps track of the date and place of each event, the reported size and type of
vegetation, the weather, the sources of ignition (in the case they were identified), the
descriptions of suppression efforts (Fire-fighting resources), and any damage estimates in
terms of type and economic cost.
Correlation Between Rainfall and Time Trends
Wildfires have occurred throughout the history of the Santa Cruz Mountains, but their
recorded frequency varies over time. In the late 1800s, only a few fires were reported, with
reports increasing in the early 20th century. The 1930s show the most reports (62), a decade
widely documented as severely dry in western North America, especially 1934 (King et al.,
2024), and characterized in California by prolonged, intense drought that heightened wildfire
risk (MacDonald et al., 2023). Archival newspapers reflect these conditions. For example,
the Santa Cruz Evening News noted: “Humidity, measured at the Mount Bielawski lookout
station at noon showed it to be only .12, an unusually dry condition of the atmosphere and
one in which a blaze would be difficult to control” (Santa Cruz Evening News, 1930, p. 1).
The Imperial Valley Press reported mutual-aid responses “encouraged by the dry, hot
weather” (Imperial Valley Press, 1924, p. 6), and months later recorded “143rd day without
rainfall. Santa Cruz is drier than it has been for years” (Santa Cruz Evening News, 1929b,
p. 1). Earlier decades also show notable activity (33 reports in the 1900s), with 1909 accounts
in the San Francisco Call (San Francisco Call, 1909, p. 2) reporting temperatures reaching
“100 degrees” across Loma Prieta, Soquel Creek, Zayante, and Van Lone Gulch. The 1940s
include multiple reports of anomalously dry and hot conditions: in 1947, papers described the
season as “never seen it so dry” (Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1947, p. 9), and in 1948 coverage
33
repeatedly emphasized an “extremely dry weekend,” with shifting winds and high
temperatures, including “14 mile-per-hour wind” and “93 degrees” (Santa Cruz Sentinel,
1948, p. 1). Seasonally, most fires started during the conclusion of summer and the onset of
autumn: September recorded 49 reports, followed by July with 41, August with 27, October
with 23, and November with 24 (see Figure 6). This monthly distribution aligns with
California's Mediterranean climate, characterized by the driest and warmest weather in late
summer and early fall (Williams et al., 2024).
Figure 6
Number of Wildfires Reports Reported In Each Month
Number of Wildfire Reports Reported in Each Month
Figure 7 plots unique fires per year (bars) alongside water-year rainfall totals (continuous
line) and the three-year rolling average of rainfall (dashed line). in
34
Figure 8 presents the same unique fires per year (bars) but replaces totals with the annual
SPI (continuous line) and its three-year rolling average (dashed line). As summarized in
Table 3 in Appendix A (drought categories column), the 1930 - 1934 interval is consistently
dry, 1934 in particular, and this multi-year deficit aligns with the largest cluster of reported
fires in the dataset. The rolling-mean curves in both figures clarify that sustained moisture
anomalies, rather than single-year totals alone, are most closely associated with elevated fire
activity in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Figure 7
Unique Fires per Year and Historical Rainfall per Year and Three-year Rolling Average Rainfall
Unique Fires per Year and Historical Rainfall Per Year and Three-year Rolling Average
Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
35
Figure 8
Unique Fires per Year and Annual SPI and Three-year Rolling Average SPI
Unique Fires per Year and Annual SPI and Three-year Rolling Average SPI
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
Figure 9 regresses annual rainfall against the number of unique fires located in its
corresponding water year, and yields a shallow, negative slope, y = -0.0144x + 3.0716, with a
very small R² = 0.0162. Wetter years tend to have slightly fewer reported fires, but the fit is
weak. Figure 10 repeats the test using the 3-year rolling average of rainfall; the slope is more
negative y = -0.0374x + 4.2638, and the fit improves a bit to R² = 0.0462, hinting that multiyear moisture deficits matter more than a single wet/dry year. Using drought intensity instead
of inches, Figure 11 (annual SPI vs. fires) again shows a small, negative relationship y = 0.2823x + 2.3443, and R² = 0.0162. Figure 12 (3-year mean SPI vs. fires) strengthens that
pattern modestly, y = -0.7318x + 2.3784, and R² = 0.0462. In short, all four lines tilt down,
but the explanatory power is low (about 1.6–4.6%), with the multi-year metrics (Figure 10 .
Figure 12) performing slightly better than the single-year ones. The weak fits likely reflect
archival reporting variability and unobserved drivers (wind events, fuel loads/slash, ignition
36
pressure, suppression capacity), yet the multi-year drought signal (e.g., 1930–1934) still
aligns with higher fire counts in the time series.
Figure 9
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Rainfall
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
Figure 10
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Three-year Average rainfall
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Three-year Average Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
37
Figure 11
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Yearly SPI
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and Yearly SPI
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
Figure 12
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and 3-year Average SPI
Correlation Between Number of Unique Fires and 3-year Average SPI
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
38
Using the SPI bins (Table 3) to label each water year, a clear pattern emerges. The wellknown 1930–1934 drought spans “near normal” to “severe drought,” and the peak fire year
in the record (1933–34) falls in a mild-drought bin. Several hallmark events align with dry
classifications: the 1895 corridor fires were preceded by a mild-drought year; the 1899 Loma
Prieta - Skyland - Soquel Canyon complex occurred during mild to moderate drought; 1916
sits near-normal to mild drought; 1917 and 1922 are mild-drought years; and the 1948 Pine
Mountain event followed about three consecutive mild-drought years (negative 3-year SPI).
The inverse signal also appears: multiple no-fire years coincide with wet bins (e.g., 1890,
1893, 1940, 1941). Overall, dry years, especially when dryness persists, tend to coincide with
more fire activity, while wet years more often show few or no reports, acknowledging that
ignition pressure, fuels, wind/heat events, and reporting intensity still matter.
Figure 13 overlays annual burned area (bars) with water-year rainfall (solid line) and the
3-year rolling mean (dashed line). Single-year totals are a poor predictor: wet years such as
1905, 1925, and 1934 show small or no fires, and years with around 30 inches produce very
different outcomes, 1911, 1933, and 1947 remain small, while 1917 and 1948 exceed 15,000
acres. The rolling mean clarifies the pattern: the largest events follow multi-year dryness
(e.g., 1899, 1917, 1948), whereas sustained wet spells in the early 1900s and mid-1940s
coincide with small burns.
39
Figure 13
Fire Size (in acres) and Rainfall per Year
Fire Size (in acres), Rainfall per Year, and 3-year Rolling Average Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
Annual burned area shows essentially no linear relationship with precipitation. In Figure
14 (fire size vs. water-year rainfall), the fitted line is y=-4.2055x+3832.2 with R2=0.0001,
meaning rainfall explains about 0.01% of the variance, effectively none, and the slope (≈ –
4.2 acres per inch) is trivial. Using the three-year rolling average of rainfall (Figure 15)
slightly improves the fit, but it remains very weak: y =- 48.081x + 5940.2, R2 = 0.0122
(~1.2% variance explained). The scatter is dominated by many small burns across a wide
range of rainfall and a few large outliers (e.g., 1917, 1948), indicating that annual
precipitation, whether single-year or three-year mean, does not meaningfully predict burned
40
area in this historical sample; other factors (wind/heat events, ignition pressure, fuels, and
reporting limits) likely drive year-to-year differences. All burned-area values used here are
the figures reported in contemporaneous newspaper articles (in acres, square miles, or
occasionally square feet) and were only unit-converted to acres for consistency; no perimeter
calculations were performed, and events reported only as linear runs (miles) were not
included in these regressions.
Figure 14
Correlation Between Fires Size in Acres and Rainfall
Correlation Between Fire Size in Acres and Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
41
Figure 15
Correlation Between Fires Size in Acres and 3-year Rolling Average Rain
Correlation Between Fire Size in Acres and Rainfall -Year Rolling Average Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
Some reports describe fires by length (how far the front ran) rather than by area. In
Figure 16, long runs show up in both wet and dry years in both year rainfall and 3-year
average rainfall. So, the time-series alone does not suggest a simple rainfall signal.
Using 12 observations of the 15 that reported fire length and rainfall data is available (see
Figure 17), the fitted line is y = 2.3371x + 33.863 with R² = 0.3128; in Figure 18 (3-year
rolling rainfall), the line is y = 1.0072x + 39.499 with R² = 0.305. Both slopes are positive,
and the explained variance is modest (~30%), meaning longer reported runs occurred across
the moisture spectrum and, if anything, were slightly more common in wetter water-years on
this small sample. The qualitative nature of “length,” and the strong influence of wind, heat
42
waves, terrain, fuels, and ignition circumstances, these results should be read as suggestive
rather than definitive.
Figure 16
Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and Historical Rainfall per Year
Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and Historical Rainfall per Year
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
43
Figure 17
Correlation Between Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and Rainfall
Correlation Between Fire Size Reported in Length(Miles) and Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
Figure 18
Correlation Between Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and 3-year Rolling Avg Rainfall
Correlation Between Fire Size Reported in Length (miles) and 3-year Rolling Average
Rainfall
Rainfall source: San Lorenzo Valley Water District - Boulder Creek station
44
How Big and What Kind of Fire
To make reports comparable, areas were converted to acres and all linear extents to miles
(and did not infer area when only distance was given). Using the NIFC’s definition of a large
fire (≥100 acres in timber or ≥300 acres in grass), the database contains 43 large fires reports,
about 19% of all events. Reviewing the largest fire annually, only 11 years had large fires.
During the studied period (1850–1950), only 11 years presented large fires (see Table 7 in
Appendix E). None is formally labeled a “megafire” in modern datasets, but
contemporaneous coverage often describes footprints of thousands of acres or tens of square
miles and sustained, extreme behavior. Headlines could be hyperbolic, yet cross-checking
multiple outlets, dates, and locations yields consistent evidence that several pre-1950 fires in
the Santa Cruz Mountains were landscape-scale and, in a few cases, approached or likely met
megafire dimensions. The summaries that follow show the pattern and the evidence used in
each case:
1867 - San Lorenzo River (East of Williams Landing/Davenport)
During the week of 6 July 1867, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported a multi-day timber fire
that “spread far and near,” advancing inland along the San Lorenzo River corridor toward
Santa Cruz and threatening town (Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1867, p. 2). Firefighters and residents
“worked day and night for four days,” ultimately stopping the blaze by back-firing. The fire
consumed or imperiled multiple industrial properties, including Davis & Cowell’s lime-kiln
timber, Samuel Adams’s lime-kiln timber, the burning of Glassell’s mill and buildings, and
the Caldwell residence; the Powder Works and paper mill were also placed “in great danger.”
Weather conditions were described as “very warm” with “every stick and leaf as dry as
45
tinder,” and fire behavior featured “forked flames” driven by “almost a gale of wind.” No
perimeter or acreage was reported, but the simultaneous threat to several sites over several
days indicates a large, landscape-scale event. Importantly, this episode sits within the
decade’s marked hydroclimatic volatility: the early 1860s brought severe flooding across
coastal watersheds, including documented damage on the Pajaro River during the Great
Flood of 1861- 62 (Daily Alta California, 1862, p. 1), followed by a well-recognized drought
in the mid- to late-1860s that extended through the latter part of the decade (Herweijer,
2007). In that drying backdrop, likely persisting into 1868 – 1869, the 1867 fire’s reports of
tinder-dry fuels and strong winds are consistent with broader regional desiccation.
1882 - Near Ben Lomond Mountain
Two brief notices, “Fire in the Mountains” (San Jose Weekly Mercury, 1882, p. 3), and a
later retrospective described the blaze as “the entire country is in flames.” (Santa Cruz
Evening News, 1936, p. 7). This striking phrase describes the magnitude of a large or a mega
fire, but neither source provides additional details useful for mapping (no ridge/creek names,
bearings, distances, roads, settlements, or acreage). With no corroborating local dispatches
for that week, the incident is retained in the chronology but excluded from perimeter
mapping and size tallies; here it serves as qualitative evidence of widespread burning
conditions rather than a defensible, georeferenced event.
1895 - Scotts Valley -Felton-Rincon-Empire Grade (September - November)
The data collection identified six distinct articles covering the same fire indicating that
the incidents persisted from September to November 1895. This fire complex was reported
across the Scotts Valley towards Vine Hill, Felton corridor and nearby canyons (Cave Gulch,
46
Wilder(s) Gulch, Empire Grade, Big Tree Road, Felton Junction). Coverage described
impacts to chaparral and redwood forests, including “thousands of acres of fine redwood
forestry” near Scotts Valley and Rincon, with ignition attributed to burning chaparral to make
pasture (San Francisco Call, 1895b, p. 6); an earlier dispatch reported “cattle in the flames”
(San Francisco Call, 1895a, p. 4). A later compilation exposed a burned area of 10,000 acres
(Santa Cruz Evening News, 1936). That same September 26 issue urged prohibition of
chaparral burning and the criminalization of “carelessness of hunters and camping parties in
the forests,” arguing that rewards for informers might deter such practices (San Francisco
Call, 1895b, p. 6). Taken together, the multi-month duration, repeated coverage, and size
descriptions indicate a large, landscape-scale event and the estimated area that covers all the
reported fire sites. This fire had an approximate extent of 10,034 hectares (24,795.17 acres),
which places it under megafire categorization (see Figure 19).
47
Figure 19
1895 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of Wildfire
1895 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of Wildfire
1899 - Loma Prieta - Skyland - Soquel Canyon (October)
This fire ran a week-long “for miles” above Boulder and Glenwood, over Saratoga
Summit, and down Loma Prieta Avenue, Skyland Ridge, Soquel Canyon, Sulphur Springs,
Laurel, Wrights Station, Cattermole Ridge, Bear Creek Summit, the Pescadero Creek
48
headwaters, and along the Los Gatos Canyon to Soquel Creek corridor, including Two Bear
Creek (Santa Cruz Surf, 1899a, 1899b). Reported losses included Josephine McCracken’s
home and property, Mar Vista Winery, Carmichael & Hubbard’s mill, the vicinity of Spanish
Ranch, and lands of the F. A. Hihn Company. The San Jose Mercury News estimated “12 to
15 square miles” burned (7,680 - 9,600 acres), called it “the greatest forest fire in the
memory of the oldest residents of that section,” and noted “8,000 gallons of wine were
poured on the flames… as fire-fighting fluid,” reflecting severe water shortage (San Jose
Mercury News, 1899, p. 5). The Santa Rosa Press Democrat replicated the scarcity: “Meirs’
winery was saved by a great quantity of wine being thrown on it. No water was available”
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 1899, p. 1). Together, the multi-day duration, size estimates,
and cross-paper coverage indicate a proximate unique fire polygon of approximately 25,600
hectares (63,405.39 acres). This fire was a large, landscape-scale event with megafire
characteristics (see Figure 20).
49
Figure 20
1899 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of Wildfire
1899 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of Wildfire
1904 - Big Basin - Ben Lomond - Boulder Creek (September - December)
Newspaper coverage descripted a fast-moving fire complex running through Big Basin
Redwood State Park and adjacent country, with losses and threats reported at Bald Mountain
(including Bald Mountain School), Majors Creek, San Vicente Gulch, Boulder Creek, Bonny
Doon, Zayante, Ben Lomond Mountain, Bloom Grade, Bear Creek, Waterman Gap,
properties such as Chase Mill, Ryder Mill, McAbee Mill, and Sequoia School. The Evening
50
Sentinel estimated “20 square miles” burned (~12,800 acres) and described conditions as
“The country as far as the eye could see was one mass of flames” (Evening Sentinel, 1904,
p. 1). The same paper later in September, reported that about one-third of the 3,900 acres
within the park boundaries had burned (Evening Sentinel, 1904) and again in December
(Santa Cruz Surf, 1905b). The Stockton Record detailed town-level impacts at Ben Lomond
and Big Creek, one person dead, the entire plant of the Big Creek Power Company destroyed,
and outages to electric street rail service and power (Stockton Record, 1904). Across the
week, papers published deaths and severe losses to manufactured lumber, mills, ranches,
vineyards, buildings, and crops, with the San Francisco Call continuing coverage of the Basin
fire and park threat (San Francisco Call, 1904). Taken together, the multi-site spread,
reported fatalities, and size estimates indicate a large, landscape-scale event affecting both
industry and communities across the central Santa Cruz Mountains, and estimating a total
burned area of approximately 17,850 hectares (44,109.59 acres), this wildfire falls under the
category of megafire (see Figure 21).
51
Figure 21
Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of the 1904 - 1905 Big Basin Wildfire, Including “Chimney Tree” Flare-up Locations
Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extent of the 1904 - 1905 Big Basin Wildfire,
Including “Chimney Tree” Flare-up Locations.
52
1905 - Ben Lomond - Love Creek -Wrights- Soquel; Big Basin- Butano-Pescadero (MayNovember)
Newspaper coverage showed three fire episodes across the central Santa Cruz Mountains.
In July to August, reports from the San Jose Mercury News and the Santa Cruz Surf
described a blaze at Love Creek/Ben Lomond in which “A destructive forest fire” burned a
ranch and buildings (Santa Cruz Surf, 1905a, p. 3). In early November, fire was recorded
along Wrights, Loma Prieta, Soquel Creek, and Cave Gulch, spreading “over ten miles”
(Marin County Tocsin, 1905, p. 4). By mid-November, the Santa Cruz Surf, and San
Francisco Call reported renewed burning in Big Basin, Butano, Pescadero, Waterman Creek
and San Lorenzo headwaters, noting a “long continued dry spell” (San Francisco Call, 1905,
p. 5) and that Pescadero Creek had been burning for two months. The Santa Cruz Surf
emphasized that “Big Basin has again broken out, the third time in fourteen months since it
started,” linking these 1905 events to the 1904 Big Basin fire (see Figure 21). Across the
season, sizes were reported in linear miles (e.g., “over five miles,” “several miles of
territory,” “half mile square”), only half mile square was reported (Santa Cruz Surf, 1905b,
p. 5) for Waterman creek and headwaters of the San Lorenzo River, which limits precise
perimeter reconstruction but, together with 1904 reports and the georeferencing shown in see
Figure 21, 1904 and 1905 were year of constant fire which indicates large, landscape-scale
spread and with characteristics for being a mega fire.
1909 - Loma Prieta - Soquel Creek headwaters - Zayante - Wrights (September)
Newspaper coverage described a multi-day fire with fronts at Loma Prieta and the
headwaters of Soquel Creek, additional activity at Zayante turning into Van Lone Gulch, and
structure loss at Wrights and Aptos (a schoolhouse burned). The San Francisco Call called it
53
“the worst fire in many years in the Santa Cruz range,” and estimated a 15 to 18-mile extent
during a 100°F day (San Francisco Call, 1909, p. 2); the Santa Cruz Morning Sentinel
reported concurrent spread on September 16, and the Santa Cruz Evening News noted
containment by September 24. Because the sources report linear distance rather than mapped
area and the burning appears to have involved multiple fronts across several watersheds, the
incident is best characterized as a large, landscape-scale event with megafire-like
characteristics, but not a confirmed megafire under the ≥10,000-hectare definition.
1916 - Big Basin - Black Mountain - Ben Lomond -Love Creek (May - September)
A multi-front outbreak spanned Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. On May 3, reported
a fire on Henry Cowell Lime & Cement Co. lands below Rincon spreading toward the
powder mill flat (San Jose Mercury News, 1916a). By September 11, the San Jose Mercury
News described a Page Mill Road (Portola, San Mateo Co.) fire of “hundreds of acres,” with
one fatality and starts linked to a picnic fire and brush burning (San Jose Mercury News,
1916b, p. 1). On September 14, the attention shifted the center to Big Basin, Black Mountain
(Dobey Gulch), Portola Canyon, and Monte Bello Summit, giving a size of “3000” (acres)
and calling it “the most dangerous fire which has raged in the Santa Cruz mountains in
years,” with ignition from a cigar stump four miles above Los Altos (San Jose Mercury
Herald, 1916, p.1). The Chico Record reported that Big Basin and the big trees were saved,
and noted fire on the Gazos River by the San Jose Mercury Herald, threatening Campbell
Redwood Lumber property with twenty men fighting. Sizes were reported in acres or linear
miles, limiting precise perimeter mapping, but the force, cross-county spread, industrial
threats, and multi-day duration indicate a large, landscape-scale event.
54
1917 - Big Basin - Ben Lomond (June - July)
A sustained fire between June and July ran through California Redwood Park (Big Basin)
across Butano Ridge and the east and west forks of Waddell Creek toward Ben Lomond
Mountain, threatening or damaging the Campbell Redwood Company property, R. E. Steele
Ranch, Hoover Ranch, and facilities on Big Creek, Mill Creek, and Boyer Creek dam
including the Coast Counties Gas & Electric Co. plant. On June 21, 1917, multiple papers
signaled the emergency “Forest Fire Sweeping Big Redwoods” (Los Angeles Herald, 1917,
p.1), “Fire Sweeps Big Basin Redwoods” (San Francisco Call, 1917, p. 1), “State Asked To
Send Help” (Riverside Daily Press, 1917, p. 1), and “Great Fire Nearing Town” (San Jose
Mercury News, 1917, p.1), “Forest Fire Burns Great Power Plant” (Hanford Sentinel, 1917,
p. 10), “Several square miles” burned with crews near exhaustion (Stockton Independent,
1917, p. 8), and an estimate of 28 square miles (~17,920 acres) with direct threat to the
power plant at Mill and Big creeks (Hanford Sentinel, 1917). Given the multi-week duration,
damages, cross-county spread, and size descriptions, a total burned area polygon was
calculated of approximately 12,454 hectares (30,744.73 acres), which shows that this fire was
not only a large, landscape-scale event but also a megafire (see Figure 22).
55
Figure 22
Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extend of Wildfire
1917 Known Burned Areas and Approximate Extend of Wildfire
1922 - Soquel - Bonny Doon Complex (August - September)
Early reports describe a Loma Prieta fire burning near the Ryder sawmill, fought by a
large volunteer force and presumed started by deer hunters (San Luis Obispo Daily
Telegram, 1922; Santa Cruz Evening News, 1922; Stockton Daily Independent, 1922). In
56
mid-September, papers called the Soquel Creek/Camp Bodger blaze the most serious forest
fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains during the year, noting damage to virgin redwoods on
Valencia-Hihn Company lands (Modesto Evening News, 1922; Riverside Daily Press, 1922;
San Francisco Call, 1922b). Simultaneously, the Olive Springs/Clover Springs sector was
reported at 10 square miles (~ 6,400 acres) (Humboldt Times, 1922; Merced Sun-Star, 1922;
The Morning Union, 1922). By Sept 22, the fire had been active for twelve days and was
sweeping toward Buzzards Lagoon, with 25 square miles (~ 16,000 acres) of virgin timber
already burned (San Francisco Call, 1922a). The next day, officials said the Bonny
Doon/Belmont Mountain front was “virtually under control” after backfiring (Morning Press,
1922).
1948 - Pine Mountain - Big Basin fire (August - September)
This incident is the earliest Santa Cruz Mountains fire with a CAL FIRE/FRAP mapped
perimeter. However, this thesis reconstructs data from historical newspapers in which this
fire was described for around 4 different newspapers and 10 articles, highlighted that for
about a week, the hills above Santa Cruz seemed to make their own weather. Smoke lay over
the San Lorenzo Valley like fog, flames shot “hundreds of feet” into the air, and Highway 9
was shut between Boulder Creek and Waterman’s Gap. The fire ran off Pine Mountain into
Big Basin/California Redwood Park, down the Waddell and Scotts Creek canyons, and
across ridges near Empire Grade, Zayante, Bonny Doon, and Summit Park. More than 1,000
firefighters, state crews, CCC camps, National Guard, prison labor, and local volunteers with
trucks and dozers, fought it while another 1,000+ campers were evacuated. Homes were
57
mostly spared, but timberlands and roads were hit hard; newspapers by week’s end put the
burn at over 15,000 acres. Windy, hot afternoons and steep canyons made every shift a grind.
Taking all the reports into account, damage types recorded in the database also evolve
through time. Nineteenth‑century accounts focus on the loss of timber, brush and pasture, but
by the early twentieth century fires were increasingly reported to damage transport and
energy infrastructure. In 1885, flames scorched railway ties and warped train tracks near
Sulphur Springs, forcing the suspension of train service. An 1895 blaze near Powder Works
made roads impassable and warped rails. In 1913 and 1917, fires crossed the Southern
Pacific Railroad tracks and threatened high‑tension lines of the Pacific Gas and Electric
Company. The 1917 Big Basin fire burned the Coast Counties Gas and Electric Company
plant, while a 1917 report “Forest fire burns great power plant” (Hanford Sentinel, 1917,
p. 10), records the destruction of part of a hydroelectric facility. The 1932 Ben Lomond
Lodge fire burned telephone and electric lines, and a 1939 fire near Los Gatos damaged
telephone lines and hiking trails. Such reports imply that communities began to experience
blackouts and transport disruptions as electrification and rail travel expanded into the
Mountains. The shift from purely natural resource losses to infrastructural impacts
demonstrates how wildfire risk changed with regional development.
Vegetation Types
Newspapers utilized a lot of different names for plants, like redwood second-growth,
forest, forests, lumber, brush, chaparral, and grass or pasture. A lot of the time, they are used
together, like "brush and timber" or "forest and grass." Earlier reports focused on the loss of
"valuable timber" (redwood/Douglas-fir), while subsequent reports focused more on burning
58
brushy hillsides and pastures. This shows how logging has changed from being intensive to
growing settlements and second-growth stands. Labels featuring "wildfire" as a general
phrase were used increasingly often in the 20th century. There are only a few articles that
talk about species like madrone, oak, and knobcone pine.
Many of the biggest events happened during times of rapid deforestation, when logging
slash (tops, limbs, and stumps) and timber operations and lumbermills were the source of
numerous fires. Data show that slash, stumps, and brush burning happened often, and
publications sometimes called it out directly. For instance, an editorial from 1895 called for
banning chaparral burns and making it illegal for hunters and campers to be "careless" and
start fires (San Francisco Call, 1895b, p. 6). Two decades later, the link between fuels and
jobs was still front-page news: The Santa Cruz Evening News on May 27, 1920, said that the
timber destroyed in recent fires could have built 2,750 five-room dwellings. This linked the
repeated fires, the lack of timber, and a historic “housing crisis,” which was not like today an
issue of affordability, but a lack of wood for building homes. When you put the vegetation
classifications and the recurrent mentions of slash disposal and broadcast burning together,
they help explain why newspapers so often reported mixed fuels ("brush and timber"). There
were a lot of human-made fuels in the terrain, which was a mix of cutover redwood,
regrowing second-growth, chaparral, and grazed grasslands. This qualitative context is
crucial for understanding fire behavior in historical records, even when exact ecological
categories cannot be derived only from the articles.
Lastly, the story about the trees is set against a backdrop of heavy grazing that has been
going on since the late 1800s, when the Coast Dairies and other ranches were operating on
59
the north coast and in the lower SC Mountains, for example, Swiss dairy farms near
Davenport and Cowell Ranch hay and stock operations (University of California, Santa Cruz,
2024). In some years, grazing may have reduced fine fuels in grasslands, making it less
difficult for fires to spread (Ratcliff et al., 2022). This is in line with research that shows that
livestock can lessen fuel loads and the chance of a fire starting in California rangelands. The
tanoak bark harvest and shipment to Bay Area tanneries were also big parts of the economy
along the redwood and tanoak belt. The cutting and transport that went along with it made
slash and encouraged disposal burning, which changed both fuel patterns and ignition
pressure in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Bowcutt, 2015).
Weather Conditions
Newspaper accounts consistently describe hot, dry, and windy setups during large fires,
and several items report concrete metrics. For dryness, the Santa Cruz Evening News
recorded “143 days without rainfall… Santa Cruz is drier than it has been for years” (Santa
Cruz Evening News, 1929b, p. 1). Extremely low humidity appears in multiple years,
including “very low humidity: 12%” measured at the Mount Bielawski lookout (Santa Cruz
Evening News, 1930, p.1). Heat was also emphasized: the San Francisco Call reported “100
degrees” in the Loma Prieta - Soquel Creek - Zayante area during the 1909 outbreak (San
Francisco Call, 1909, p. 2). Winds recur as a driver of spread, e.g., “The heaviest winds of
the year” during the Wrights - Loma Prieta - Soquel episode (Marin County Tocsin, 1905,
p. 4). Lightning is noted as a less common but important ignition source; an “eight-hour
lightning storm” was blamed for multiple starts near Big Basin/Bonny Doon/Gazos in late
August 1934 (Madera Tribune, 1934, p 1; Santa Cruz Evening News, 1934, p.1). These fires
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were extinguished in short time because of labor camps in Big Basin. Overall, these
contemporaneous reports align with the seasonal pattern (see Table 8 in Appendix F), most
fires occur from July to September, and with the drought context is summarized the
correlation between rainfall and time trends section (e.g., 1930 - 1934 drought: Cook et al.,
2014; MacDonald et al., 2023).
Ignition Sources and Burning Practices
Most articles don’t name a cause, but where they do, lightning shows up only a handful
of times. Table 2 lists each ignition category, the number of fires in that category, and the
percentage of the total. For example, during an “eight-hour lightning storm” that sparked
multiple starts near Big Basin/Bonny Doon/Gazos (Madera Tribune, 1934, p. 1; Santa Cruz
Evening News, 1934, p.1). The rest are overwhelmingly human-related: unattended
campfires (e.g., Castle Rock/Long Bridge; San Jose Mercury News, 1911), hunters using fire
or shot to drive game in Scotts Valley and Rincon (San Francisco Call, 1895b, p. 6), sparks
from locomotives or engines (Zayante, Ben Lomond, Scotts Valley, Big Creek; multiple
items across 1900–1937), defective fireplaces/chimneys (Ben Lomond Lodge; Santa Cruz
Evening News, 1932), broadcast chaparral/pasture burns (explicitly criticized in an editorial;
San Francisco Call, 1895b), spontaneous combustion of oily rags (Doyle Gulch/Santa Cruz
dump; Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1932), and discarded cigars/matches (Big Basin/Black Mountain;
San Jose Mercury News, 1916). By the 1930s, papers also reported incendiary/suspicious
starts (e.g., Fall Creek headwaters with tire tracks and slashed brush; Santa Cruz Sentinel,
1937b). Overall, the narrative shifts from scolding careless recreation to condemning
unregulated land-clearing fires as the main ignition pressure.
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Table 2
Fire Ignition Sources Summary
Fire Ignition Sources Summary
Ignition Sources
Unknown
Other
Count
Percentage
Example article
173
20
76.9
8.9
Children (likely accidental) - Santa Cruz Sentinel
(July 12, 1932)
Campfire
8
3.6
Originated by camping party driven out of the
mountains - Daily Alta California (Oct 4, 1885)
Locomotive/equipmen
t
5
2.2
Sparks from a locomotive - Santa Cruz Sentinel
(Sep 22, 1900)
Arson
4
1.8
Intentionally set by arsonist (caught) - Los Angeles
Herald / Santa Cruz Evening News (Jul 1920)
Lightning
4
1.8
Lightning ignited multiple fires near Big Basin Madera Tribune (Aug 27-28, 1934)
Brush/chaparral burn
3
1.3
Burning chaparral to make pasture - San Francisco
Call (Sep 26, 1895)
Hunting
2
0.9
Shotgun by hunters to drive game - Santa Cruz
Evening News (Dec 5, 1936)
Smoking materials
2
0.9
Cigar stump ignited blaze - San Jose Mercury News
(Sep 14, 1916)
Sparks
2
0.9
Defective fireplace, sparks spread into forest Santa Cruz Evening News (Apr 9, 1932)
Spontaneous
combustion
1
0.4
Spontaneous combustion at Santa Cruz dump Santa Cruz Sentinel (Jul 12, 1932)
Slash burning
1
0.4
Slash burning permit - Santa Cruz Evening News
(Nov 26, 1941)
62
Firefighting Responses and Suppression Strategies
Accounts of firefighting show how suppression evolved from ad-hoc volunteer efforts to
organized, inter-agency responses. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fires were
typically fought by local residents, ranch hands, and mill workers using wet sacks, shovels,
hand-cut firebreaks, and backfires along ridgelines. During dry years, water scarcity forced
improvisation, most strikingly in 1899, when vintners on the Summit poured about 8,000
gallons of wine on advancing flames and saturated buildings with wine for lack of water (San
Jose Mercury News, 1899; see also Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 1899). As the region
modernized, help increasingly arrived from outside the immediate burn area (e.g., motorized
crews and coordinated callouts reported in the 1905 Love Creek/Ben Lomond events: San
Jose Mercury News, 1905; Santa Cruz Surf, 1905a).
By the 1920s, detection, prevention, and suppression became more systematized. Local
papers ran explicit fire-prevention campaigns during the peak-risk season, e.g., Santa Cruz
Evening News carried “Help Protect Santa Cruz Timber Lands” (Santa Cruz Evening News,
1920a, p. 2) and “Protect the Woods from Fire” (Santa Cruz Evening News, 1920b, p. 9),
urging residents to drown campfires, break matches in two, quench pipe ashes, avoid brush
burning on windy days, and report smoke to the forest ranger/state warden. Lookout
infrastructure expanded as well (e.g., a Castle Rock Ridge tower linked by telephone in the
early 1920s), and lookouts at Loma Prieta and Bielawski routinely confirmed ignitions. Early
aerial assistance also appears in the record; for a 1920 Zayante/Bean Creeks fire, newspapers
noted airplanes aiding crews alongside trucks and large call-ups from Santa Cruz and
Davenport (Los Angeles Herald, 1920).
63
Organized state labor camps and standing crews begin appearing in the early 1930s, and
between 1935 and 1937 the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is repeatedly named as
responders to fight large Santa Cruz Mountains fires (e.g., “50 CCC men from Big Basin
camp” and multi-camp mobilizations: Santa Cruz Evening News, 1935, p. 8; Santa Cruz
Sentinel, 1937a, p.1 ). Through the 1940s, suppression reads as increasingly professionalized:
coordinated dozer lines and backfiring, protection of telephone lines, inter-county mutual aid,
and dedicated state crews (e.g., Sandy Point). Editorials also adopt a more urgent tone like
“this may be the worst fire year in the history of Santa Cruz County unless added precaution
is taken” (Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1946, p. 1). In short, public education, infrastructure, and
multi-agency coordination gradually supplanted ad-hoc volunteerism while still relying on
local knowledge during fast-moving events.
Economic Impacts
Historical record rarely provides precise dollar losses. Only 15 of 266 newspaper entries
include a specific amount; figures range from US$5 (small grass fire) to ~ US$250,000 (large
timber fire), with a median near US$15,000. More often, articles used round phrases
“damage in the thousands of dollars,” (Hanford Sentinel, 1917, p. 10) “exceeded $250,000”
(Santa Cruz Evening News, 1929a, p. 1), rather than audited totals. This reflects period
reporting practices and the rural settings of many events. As development expanded in the
mid-twentieth century, potential losses clearly grew, but stories still emphasized what was
damaged (timber, mills, ranch buildings, vineyards, telephone/power lines, railroad tracks,
roads/bridges) more than how much it cost. The database therefore offers strong qualitative
patterns of impact but does not support a defensible long-run monetary trend.
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Impacts also shift over time. Nineteenth-century articles center on the loss of “valuable
timber” (redwood and Douglas-fir). In the period between the 1910s and 1940s, reports
increasingly mention infrastructure and community effects such as blackouts from
power/telephone failures, warped rails and service suspensions, road closures, evacuations,
and occasional losses to industrial plants, mirroring the region’s transition from extractive
timber landscapes to mixed settlement, utilities, and recreation.
Georeferenced reconstructions in ArcGIS Pro indicate that at least three events plausibly
meet or exceed the commonly used megafire threshold of ≥ 10,000 ha (24,710.54 acres), a
criterion widely applied in the literature (Linley et al., 2022): the 1895 Scotts Valley - Felton
- Rincon - Empire Grade complex (12,000 ha), the 1904 Big Basin / Ben Lomond - Boulder
Creek complex with 1905 flare-ups (14,200 ha), and the 1917 Big Basin - Ben Lomond event
(~17,000 ha).
Taken together, the evidence shows recurrent but highly variable economic impacts, a
clear shift in what is at risk from timber and mills to infrastructure and communities, and the
presence of ≥ 10,000 ha fires that place Santa Cruz Mountains history within a broader largefire/megafire context, even if precise monetary trends cannot be derived from the archive.
65
Discussion
Building this long‑term chronology of wildfires in the Santa Cruz Mountains required
looking far beyond the satellite images resources as well as tree ring and scars analysis data.
By combing through newspaper archives and other accounts, this study uncovered 225
separate fire events, a pile of observations that reaches back long before remote sensing
existed. Combing through archival newspapers and reports yielded 225 fire events, extending
Santa Cruz Mountains fire history well before the era of remote sensing or modern tree‑ring
studies. However, the high number of reports in the 1920s and 1930s does not necessarily
mean those decades burned more than others. Earlier decades (e.g., 1890s, 1900s, 1910s)
contain fewer newspaper items yet include some of the largest perimeters in the database,
suggesting the apparent spike from the 1920s through 1930s reflects increased reporting, not
necessarily greater burned area. Likewise, references to “quiet years” should be tied to
demonstrable evidence: the rainfall and fire correlation plots in the Results show that low
annual rainfall only partially explains fire frequency, and rainy years do not always coincide
with fewer fires.
1927 stands out as a quieter year likely relates less to climate and more to improvements
in detection and suppression. By the late 1920s, public fire‑prevention campaigns “Help
Protect Santa Cruz Timber Lands,” (Santa Cruz Evening News, 1920a, p. 2) and new lookout
towers on Castle Rock Ridge and Bielawski Peak were in place. These allowed earlier
detection and quicker response, reducing fire spread even during dry conditions. This context
links the 1927 lull to evolving suppression tactics rather than rainfall alone. These differences
remind us that the story of fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains is not just an ecological story
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made up of tree rings and satellite images. It is also a social story about how people saw,
talked about, and reacted to fire. Jason M. Greenlee and Jean H. Langenheim (1990)
characterize the “Anglo Period” (1848 - 1929) as a pivotal era during which Euro-American
settlement, forestry, and initial fire-suppression programs disturbed Indigenous fire regimes.
This study helps address that historical gap by identifying 225 wildfire events, many
previously unrecorded, and confirming that big and even megafire scale burning (>10,000
hectares) happened decades before modern satellite records. The San Francisco Call (1909,
p 2) called a multi-day fire near Loma Prieta and Soquel Creek "the worst fire in many years
in the Santa Cruz range." Another editorial in the same paper (San Francisco Call, 1895b,
p. 6) said that chaparral burning should be made illegal and criticized the "carelessness of
hunters and camping parties," showing that people were already aware of the risks of humancaused fires. When compared to fire-scar studies that say return intervals range from 12 to 50
years (Lorimer et al., 2009), about 45 years in Big Basin Redwoods State Park (Jones &
Russell, 2015), and different intervals depending on the type of forest and slope aspect
(Stephens & Fry, 2005), these archival records give us a different view. All these things show
that the region's fire regime during the Anglo Period was shaped not only by climate and
vegetation, but also by changing social attitudes, land-use practices, and suppression
strategies. This shows how human and ecological systems worked together to create wildfire
patterns long before wildfire spatial data is available that remain part of the fire risk today.
Interpreting Fire Size and Evolving Perceptions
In the dataset, the articles that explicitly described sizes, showed that most fires burned
hundreds to a few thousand acres, but only, some pre‑1950 events approach or exceed
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10,000 ha (24,710 acres), the megafire definition used by Linley et al. (2022). These include
the 1895 Scotts Valley - Felton - Rincon - Empire Grade complex (~12,000 ha), the 1899
Loma Prieta-Skyland - Soquel Canyon (~22,400 ha), the 1904 Big Basin / Ben Lomond Boulder Creek fire (with 1905 flare‑ups) (~14,200 ha), and the 1917 Big Basin - Ben
Lomond event (~17,000 ha). Considering these findings, it is no longer accurate to state that
only the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex surpasses the megafire threshold. While the CZU fire
burned ~35,000 ha and destroyed >1,400 structures, earlier large fires lacked today’s housing
and building exposure; thus, a 1,000‑acre blaze in the 1890s could still elicit headlines such
as “The worst fire in many years in the Santa Cruz range” (San Francisco Call, 1909, p. 2) or
“The greatest forest fires that the county has ever seen” (Evening Sentinel, 1904, p. 1). Those
phrases are revealing for residents without modern firefighting; even a 1,000-acre blaze
could feel overwhelming. In other words, size is only part of the story. A century ago,
population density, infrastructure, and available resources shaped how people experienced
and described fires. This insight cautions against applying a single acreage threshold across
time. When comparing events, it makes more sense to discuss large and very large fires in
relation to the landscapes and communities they impacted.
Drivers and Socio‑Ecological Dynamics
The results confirm that fire season peaks in July - September, aligning with California’s
dry summer and early autumn. However, annual rainfall explains little of the variance in fire
frequency or area (low R2 values in the regression plots), indicating that drought acts as a
backdrop rather than a singular trigger, lightning is mentioned in only a few articles. Human
ignitions dominate where causes are known sparks from locomotives and engines, unattended
68
campfires, brush‑clearing burns, and occasional arson (See Table 2 in the Results section).
Editorials from the 1890s criticized burning chaparral and careless hunters, foreshadowing
modern fire‑prevention rules. Vivid anecdotes such as vintners dousing flames with 8,000
gallons of wine in 1899 because water was scarce (San Jose Mercury‑News, 1899), highlight
the social and economic dimensions of ignition and suppression patterns. These stories show
that social and economic factors, not just the weather, affected how fires were started and put
out. Additionally, they are in line with community-based wildfire histories from other regions
of the world, where socioeconomic circumstances and local land use play a significant role
(e.g., Jeffers 2021).
Importantly, the database captures how the region’s-built environment changed and
became increasingly vulnerable to fire. In the late nineteenth century, newspapers mostly
lamented burnt timber, lost pasture and the occasional destroyed cabin. A few decades later,
the damage reports shifted: fires tore up railway tracks, singed roads, and downed power
lines; by the 1930s, telephone and electric lines regularly appeared in the casualty lists.
When a hydroelectric plant burned in 1917, the stories warned of energy blackouts, a concern
that would have been unimaginable half a century earlier. This story fits in with bigger talks
about how electrifying forested areas makes wildfires more likely and makes them harder to
manage (e.g., Balch et al., 2024). It underscores the value of bringing engineering, ecology
and social science together to understand and mitigate the vulnerability of critical
infrastructure.
69
Changing Suppression Strategies and Community Engagement
Reading through a century and a half of articles reveals the evolution of firefighting
itself. The earliest accounts portray neighbors, ranch hands, and millworkers dashing to the
scene with buckets, wet sacks, or whatever tools were at hand, sometimes even hurling
barrels of wine at the flames when water was scarce. Gradually, a more organized approach
began to take hold. By the 1920s, newspapers were running public education campaigns
urging campers to snuff out matches and emphasizing the economic value of timber. Around
the same time, lookout towers sprang up on ridgelines, and a dedicated telephone network
allowed communities to alert one another quickly. When the Civilian Conservation Corps
(CCC) arrived in the 1930s, they brought skilled workers who created trails, set backfires,
and cut firebreaks. The growth of state-sponsored firefighting throughout the US was
reflected in these initiatives. The advent of aircraft in 1920, which were used for water drop
and spotting, suggested the technological revolution that would revolutionize fire
management.
These shifts illustrate the principles of social-ecological resilience in action. Each step,
from neighbors banding together, to building lookout towers, to forming the CCC, represents
an adjustment to a changing hazard landscape (Folke et al., 2005). As we look ahead,
prescribed burning and community‑led fuel‑reduction projects, inspired in part by historical
experience and renewed attention to Indigenous and local fire knowledge, become central
tools for adapting to current and future risk. The past reminds us of that co‑producing
knowledge is essential: local insight into fuels and weather, when combined with scientific
70
expertise and policy support, yields more robust strategies than any discipline can provide
alone.
Implications for Policy and Planning
Looking across two centuries of wildfire stories provides more than just historical trivia;
it offers a yardstick for today’s challenges. Except for the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex
blaze, the only event in our archive large enough to meet modern megafire thresholds, Santa
Cruz’s earlier fires were sizable but not gigantic. Their absence on a megafire scale suggests
that the enormous fires now common in California are, in many respects, a new phenomenon,
fueled by a warming climate, decades of fuel accumulation, and sprawling development.
Considering this, policymakers should be cautious about using historic acreage as a
benchmark for today’s risk. At the same time, the old reports hold valuable lessons. They
show how often people start fires, how weak infrastructure can be, and how much of a
difference it can make to find them early and be ready as a community. This information can
help with current planning for the wildland - urban interface by mapping out where fires have
happened in the past, timing projects to happen when they are most likely to happen and
putting money into community education and local firefighting skills.
On a broader level, this project shows that archival and anthropological tools deserve a
place alongside satellite data and tree‑ring studies in the wildfire researcher’s toolkit.
Newspapers, court records, and personal accounts, when read systematically, reveal patterns
of hazard, response, and social change that no remote sensor can capture. When these sources
are combined with ecological data, they offer a richer, multi‑scale understanding of how
people and landscapes co‑evolve with fire. Expanding this approach to other regions,
71
weaving in oral histories and Indigenous knowledge, and modelling the interplay of social
and ecological drivers over long timescales will help scholars and practitioners alike make
sense of an increasingly fiery future.
72
Recommendations
Expand the Archival Base and Maintain the Database
The database of 225 wildfire events is an invaluable start but remains incomplete. Future
work should broaden the source material to include local and regional archives beyond the
California Digital Newspaper Collection. The Mountain Echo archive in Boulder Creek, for
example, may contain detailed accounts of 19th‑century fires; Spanish‑period mission and
land‑grant records could reveal earlier burning practices; and the extensive holdings of the
Bancroft Library and state historical societies likely preserve additional wildfire reports.
Incorporating oral histories from long‑time residents and Indigenous communities would also
capture lived experience of fire. Each newly discovered fire should be added to the database
with standardized fields (date, location, size, ignition cause, vegetation, impacts) to maintain
continuity.
Refine the Spatial Record Through Georeferencing
Many historical articles describe blazes in broad terms “The country as far as the eye
could see was one mass of flames” (Evening Sentinel, 1904, p.1), “the greatest forest fire in
the memory of the oldest residents of that section” (San Jose Mercury News, 1899, p.5)
making it difficult to delineate true extents. By pairing old property maps, witness
statements, and topographic clues with modern geographic information systems, researchers
can draw more precise boundaries around past fires. This is particularly important in
frequently burned areas such as Big Basin, where fires from 1895, 1904-1905 and 1917 now
appear, based on GIS reconstruction, to have exceeded 10,000 ha and thus meet
contemporary megafire criteria. Improving spatial accuracy will allow meaningful
73
comparisons between historical and modern fires and will help calibrate models of fuel
continuity and fire spread.
Integrate Ecological and Dendrochronological Data
To move beyond newspaper descriptions, researchers should integrate tree‑ring and
fire‑scar analyses from coast redwood stands and other species in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Such data can reveal fire frequency and intensity in centuries lacking newspapers and help
verify the timing of major events. Cross‑matching scar dates with archival reports could
confirm whether a scar corresponds to a documented fire or to an unreported,
lightning‑ignited blaze. Similarly, pollen and charcoal studies from lake sediments could
extend the fire history into the pre‑contact period.
Link Historical Fire Pathways to Land‑Use Planning
Long‑term fire records should inform modern risk assessment and spatial planning.
Mapping historical ignition hotspots, fire corridors and recurring damage, particularly around
Big Basin, Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond, can guide the siting of new subdivisions, roads
and utility lines. The record shows that repeated burns cluster along certain ridges and creek
canyons; development in these areas should include defensible‑space requirements and
fire‑resistant design. Planners should also consider how historical land uses (logging,
ranching, viticulture) influenced fuel loads and ignition patterns, and how those drivers may
recur under different forms (e.g., recreation, cannabis farming).
Embed Fire History in Risk Communication and Public Education
Early prevention campaigns, such as those published in the Santa Cruz Evening News in
August 1920, urged residents to douse campfires, break matches in two and avoid burning
74
brush on windy days. Public exhibits at Big Basin and in local museums, interactive online
maps, and school curricula could all highlight how past fires, both large and small, shaped
the landscape. By emphasizing that many ignitions were human‑caused (sparks, campfires,
chaparral burning) and that historical communities developed suppression tactics over time,
these narratives can inspire support for prescribed burning, fuel reduction and community
fire brigades.
Collectively, these recommendations underscore that the wildfire history of the Santa
Cruz Mountains is as much a cultural record as an ecological one. Expanding and refining the
database, incorporating additional archival and ecological evidence, georeferencing past
fires, and tying fire pathways to planning and education will ensure that the lessons of two
centuries of fire are not lost but applied to mitigate the growing risks of the 21st century.
75
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Appendix
Appendix A
Table 3
Year Rainfall, Three-year rolling average, Standardized Precipitation Indices (SPI), Three-year average SPI, and Drought Category.
Year Rainfall, Three-year Rolling Average, Standardized Precipitation Indices (SPI), Threeyear Average SPI, and Drought Category.
Year
(Oct 1 - Sept 30)
1888-89
1889-90
1891-92
1892-93
1893-94
1894-95
1895-96
1896-97
1897-98
1898-99
1899-00
1900-01
1901-02
1902-03
1903-04
1904-05
1905-06
1906-07
1907-08
1908-09
1909-10
1910-11
1911-12
1912-13
1913-14
1914-15
1915-16
1916-17
1917-18
1918-19
1919-20
1920-21
1921-22
1922-23
1923-24
1924-25
1925-26
1926-27
1927-28
1928-29
1929-30
1930-31
Uniq
fire
(WY)
2
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
1
0
3
1
1
3
1
4
4
3
3
1
2
2
2
2
7
0
3
2
0
1
2
3
6
0
4
1
1
1
1
1
4
5
Rainfall
(inches)
49.05
124.26
47.73
77.15
46.68
82.45
50.41
52.36
24.25
45.44
54.49
54.4
43.47
57.61
52.25
62.25
73.89
64.25
33.49
73.64
42.45
57.83
31.54
21.92
69.34
68.25
53.02
38.77
22.01
45.29
31.44
55.04
44.89
49.32
20.15
41.65
39.63
39.77
41.8
26.55
40.62
20.58
3-year
rolling avg
rainfall
73.68
83.05
57.19
68.76
59.85
61.74
42.34
40.68
41.39
51.44
50.79
51.83
51.11
57.37
62.80
66.80
57.21
57.13
49.86
57.97
43.94
37.10
40.93
53.17
63.54
53.35
37.93
35.36
32.91
43.92
43.79
49.75
38.12
37.04
33.81
40.35
40.4
36.04
36.32
29.25
87
Annual
SPI
-0.07
3.78
-0.14
1.37
-0.19
1.64
0.00
0.10
-1.34
-0.25
0.21
0.21
-0.35
0.37
0.10
0.61
1.20
0.71
-0.86
1.19
-0.41
0.38
-0.96
-1.46
0.97
0.91
0.14
-0.59
-1.45
-0.26
-0.97
0.24
-0.28
-0.05
-1.55
-0.45
-0.55
-0.54
-0.44
-1.22
-0.50
-1.52
SPI
3-year avg
Drought
category
1.19
1.67
0.35
0.94
0.48
0.58
-0.41
-0.50
-0.46
0.05
0.02
0.07
0.04
0.36
0.64
0.84
0.35
0.35
-0.03
0.39
-0.33
-0.68
-0.48
0.14
0.67
0.15
-0.64
-0.77
-0.89
-0.33
-0.34
-0.03
-0.63
-0.68
-0.85
-0.51
-0.51
-0.73
-0.72
-1.08
Mild drought
Extreme wet
Mild drought
Moderate wet
Mild drought
Severe wet
Near normal
Near normal
Moderate
Mild
drought
drought
Near normal
Near normal
Mild drought
Near normal
Near normal
Near normal
Moderate wet
Near normal
Mild drought
Moderate wet
Mild drought
Near normal
Mild drought
Moderate
Near
normal
drought
Near normal
Near normal
Mild drought
Moderate
Mild
drought
drought
Mild drought
Near normal
Mild drought
Mild drought
Severe drought
Mild drought
Mild drought
Mild drought
Mild drought
Moderate
Mild
drought
drought
Severe drought
Year
(Oct 1 - Sept 30)
1931-32
1932-33
1933-34
1934-35
1935-36
1936-37
1937-38
1938-39
1939-40
1940-41
1941-42
1942-43
1943-44
1944-45
1945-46
1946-47
1947-48
1948-49
1949-50
Uniq
fire
(WY)
7
4
12
1
5
3
2
6
0
3
2
1
2
5
4
1
1
4
1
Rainfall
(inches)
62.46
24
36.75
50.16
57.27
54.04
81.86
28.22
80.77
98.02
73.93
55.74
41.34
52.81
40.26
34.6
39.75
44.92
44.58
3-year
rolling avg
rainfall
41.22
35.68
41.07
36.97
48.06
53.82
64.39
54.71
63.62
69.00
84.24
75.90
57.00
49.96
44.80
42.56
38.20
39.76
43.08
88
Annual
SPI
SPI
3-year avg
Drought
category
0.62
-1.35
-0.70
-0.01
0.35
0.19
1.61
-1.13
1.55
2.44
1.20
0.27
-0.46
0.12
-0.52
-0.81
-0.54
-0.28
-0.30
-0.47
-0.75
-0.48
-0.69
-0.12
0.18
0.72
0.22
0.68
0.95
1.73
1.31
0.34
-0.02
-0.28
-0.40
-0.62
-0.54
-0.37
Near normal
Moderate
Mild
drought
drought
Mild drought
Near normal
Near normal
Severe wet
Moderate
Severe
wet
drought
Extreme wet
Moderate wet
Near normal
Mild drought
Near normal
Mild drought
Mild drought
Mild drought
Mild drought
Mild drought
Appendix B
Table 4
Unique Fires Per Year
Unique Fires per Year
Unique
1867_1
Fire1868_1
Year
1869-1
1871_1
1882_1
1883_1
1885_1
1886_1
1887_1
1888_1
1888_2
1889_1
1890_1
1891-1
1895-1
1897_1
1898_1
1899_1
1900_1
1900_2
1901_1
1901_2
1903_1
1903_2
1903_3
1904_1
1904_2
1905_2
1905_3
1906_1
1906_2
1906_3
1908_1
1908_2
1908_3
1909_1
1910_1
1910_2
1910_3
1911_1
1911_2
1911_3
1913_1
1913_2
1913_3
1914_1
1916_1
Day/m
6-Jul
onth
0-Jan
30-Oct
19-Oct
26-Sep
24-Sep
19-Aug
10-Sep
15-Sep
15-Aug
23-Oct
26-Sep
20-Nov
26-Aug
20-Sep
9-Sep
12-Aug
7-Oct
15-Aug
22-Sep
21-Sep
13-Oct
3-Jul
9-Sep
7-Sep
22-Jan
0-Jan
2-Mar
20-Jun
4-Oct
0-Jan
20-Oct
11-Apr
2-Sep
31-Aug
16-Sep
11-Jul
31-Aug
8-Oct
2-Jul
29-Nov
29-Nov
12-Jul
22-Sep
4-Sep
19-Mar
1-May
Unique
1916_2
Fire 1916_3
Year
1917_1
1919_1
1920_1
1920_2
1921_1
1921_2
1921_3
1921_4
1922_1
1922_2
1923_1
1924_1
1924_2
1924_3
1925_1
1926_1
1926_2
1928_1
1929_1
1929_2
1929_3
1929_4
1929_5
1930_1
1930_2
1931_1
1931_2
1931_3
1932_1
1932_2
1932_3
1932_4
1932_5
1932_6
1932_7
1932_8
1933_1
1933_2
1933_3
1933_4
1933_5
1934_1
1934_1
1934_2
0
1934_3
Day/m
10-Sep
onth 12-Sep
10-Jan
25-Sep
16-Jan
9-Jul
7-Jul
7-Jul
18-Aug
6-May
7-Aug
15-Sep
28-Nov
30-May
1-Aug
23-Sep
6-Jul
16-Jul
9-Nov
10-Aug
2-Jul
5-Nov
5-Nov
7-Nov
22-Nov
22-Nov
18-Dec
19-May
2-Aug
3-Aug
2-Mar
9-Apr
24-Jun
26-Jun
11-Jul
21-Aug
26-Aug
19-Oct
4-Jul
17-Jul
25-Jul
5-Nov
30-Nov
23-May
14-Sep
7-Jul
8-Jul
89
Unique
1934_4
Fire 1934_5
Year
1934_6
1934_7
1934_8
1934_9
1935_1
1936_1
1936_2
1936_3
1936_4
1936_5
1937_1
1937_2
1937_4
1937-3
1938_1
1939_1
1939_2
1939_3
1939_4
1939_5
1939_6
1941_1
1941_2
1941_3
1941_4
1941_5
1943_1
1944_1
1944_2
1945_1
1945_2
1945_3
1945_4
1945_5
1946_1
1946_2
1946_3
1946_4
1947_1
1948_1
1949_1
1949_2
1949_3
1949_4
1950_1
Day/m
30-Jul
onth 30-Jul
1-Aug
1-Aug
25-Aug
25-Aug
2-Aug
19-Jul
23-Jul
24-Jul
31-Jul
26-Sep
17-Apr
24-Sep
7-Oct
25-Sep
4-Aug
21-Jul
2-Aug
16-Aug
21-Sep
21-Sep
21-Sep
23-Jun
15-Jul
22-Sep
3-Oct
26-Nov
0-Jan
0-Jan
0-Jan
20-Jul
20-Jul
24-Jul
24-Jul
28-Sep
31-Jul
31-Jul
31-Jul
3-Jul
12-Apr
31-Aug
5-Aug
22-Sep
26-Sep
20-Sep
3-Jul
Appendix C
Table 5
Newspaper Titles and Number of Articles
Newspaper Titles and Number of Articles
No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Newspaper Name
Number of Articles
Blue Lake Advocate
Calexico Chronicle
Chico Record
Daily Alta California
Daily News Leader (San Mateo)
Evening Sentinel
Fresno Bee
Hanford Journal (Daily)
Hanford Sentinel
Healdsburg Tribune
Humboldt Times
Imperial Valley Press
Los Angeles Herald
Madera Tribune
Marin County Tocsin
Martinez News-Gazette
Marysville Daily Appeal
May 1924 Merced Sun-Star
May 1924 Stockton Independent
Merced Sun-Star
Modesto Bee
Morning Press
Morning Union
San Jose Mercury news
San Jose weekly Mercury
Petaluma Argus Courier
Petaluma Daily Morning Courier
Press Democrat
Riverside Daily Press
Sacramento Daily Union
San Francisco Call
San Jose Mercury news
San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram
San Pedro News Pilot
Santa Cruz Evening News
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Santa Cruz Sentinel (Weekly)
Santa Cruz Surf
Stockton Independent
Stockton Record
The Daily Press
Total Newspaper articles
3
2
3
1
1
3
1
2
4
1
3
2
5
7
1
1
1
1
1
2
3
3
3
1
1
2
1
2
4
1
15
22
1
2
42
32
1
10
3
1
1
196
90
Appendix D
Table 6
Historical Rainfall. San Lorenzo Valley Water District – Boulder Creek Station
Historical Rainfall. San Lorenzo Valley Water District–Boulder Creek Station
91
Appendix E
Table 7
Fire Sizes and Classification
Fire Sizes and Classification
Size (extension)
as shown in the
newspaper
Year
Unique
fire
Day/
Month
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
1869
1871
1869-1
1871_1
30-Oct
19-Oct
Santa Cruz County - forty-mile shotgun
Watsonville Road
Ben Lomond mountain. Reese tract or San Vicente
grant
Bear Creek, Love's Creek, Boulder Creek, Ben
Lomond range
1885
1885
19-Aug
1885_1
13-Sep
22-Sep
1895
20-Sep
1895
22-Sep
Cave Gulch, Wilders Gulch. Empire Grade Road.
The Big Tree Road. vicinity of Felton. Felton
Junction and tunnel 6
Powder works. Road between Rincon and Felton
24-Sep
Gold Gulch, near Felton, Rincon, and Scotts Valley
27-Sep
26-Oct
18-Nov
18-Nov
18-Nov
7-Oct
7-Oct
Zayante region
Empire grade near Ben Lomond Mountain
Vine hill
Scotts Valley
Zyante and Boomers Gulch
Bear creek
headwaters of Pescadero creek
above Boulder and Glenwood and Saratoga summit
between Alma and Los Gatos.
Loma Prieta Avenue, Skyland, Soquel Canyon.
Brushy's and the Sulphur Springs. Boulder creek,
Bear Creek
Summit, Los Gatos creek road, Skyland ridge near
Sulphur Springs. Wrights Station
1895_1
1895
1895
1895
1895
1895
1899
1899
1899
7-Oct
1899_1
1899
9-Oct
1899
10-Oct
Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(acres)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(miles)
40
4
10,000
6
Fire Size
GIS
( acres)
Classifi
cation
(Large/
Mega)
Large
6 miles
10000 acres
6miles
1885
1895
40 mile long
4 miles
Thousands of
acres
Classifi
cation
(Large /
Mega)
Large
Large
NS
92
NS
Thousands of
acres
10000
NS
NS
NS
NS
NS
NS
Large
10,000
24,795,17
Mega
63,405.39
Mega
Large
NS
9600
12 miles
Thousands of
acres
Large
12
Year
Unique
fire
Day/
Month
Size (extension)
as shown in the
newspaper
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
Classifi
cation
(Large /
Mega)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(acres)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(miles)
Fire Size
GIS
( acres)
Classifi
cation
(Large/
Mega)
44,109.59
Mega
12 to 15 Square
miles
1899
9-Oct
1904
9-Sep
Los Gatos canyon to Sequel Creek, between
mountains Laurel and Wrights. Sulphur springs
NS
Big Basin, Boulder Creek, Bonny Doon, Bald
Mountain, San Vicente Creek, Ben Lomond, Zyante
and Coast regions
1904_1
Big Basin, Bloom grade. Ben Lomond Mountain,
Vicente Gulch. Boulder Creek. Bear Creek.
Boulder Creek both sides of the creek
Boulder Creek
Boulder Creek, Mill Creek Canyon
San Vicente Creek and Majors Creek
Wrights, Loma Prieta, Soquel creek
Buttano Creek, Pescadero Creek, Headwaters of the
San Lorenzo River, toward Waterman Creek.
Waterman creek and Headwaters of the San Lorenzo
River
1904
9-Sep
1904
1904
1904
1904
1905
1905_3
9-Sep
26-Aug
9-Sep
9-Sep
9-Nov
1905
1905_3
15-Nov
1905
1905_3
14-Nov
1908
1908_1
11-Apr
Bear creek, back of Boulder Creek, King Creek
1908
1909
1908_2
1909_1
2-Sep
17-Sep
1910
1910_1
11-Jul
1910
1911
1911
1910_3
1911_2
1911_3
8-Oct
31-Aug
29-Nov
Los gatos canyon, south of Alma
Loma Prieta, Soquel creek
Headwaters of the San Lorenzo River and of King
Creek about ten miles from Boulder Creek.
vicinity of Felton and Ben Lomond
Blackburn Gulch
Between Vine Hill and Soquel Creek
93
Thousands of
acres.
About one-third of
the entire area of
the 3900 acres
included within
the park
boundaries.
(1,300acres)
20 square miles
(12,800acres)
NS
NS
NS
NS
Over ten miles
several miles of
territory
Large
12,800
Large
320
10
Half mile square
Over a mile
square (640 acre)
Hundreds of acres
15 to 18 miles
Large
640
Large
18
1000 acres
Large
700 acres
2 miles
50 acres
Large
1,000
50
Large
2
Year
Unique
fire
Day/
Month
1913
1913_1
12-Jul
1914
1914_1
19-Mar
1916
1916_2
10-Sep
1916
1916
1917
12-Sep
1916_3
1917_1
1917
14-Sep
21-Jul
21-Jun
1917_1
1917
23-Jul
1919
1919_1
25-Sep
1921
1921_4
31-Oct
1922
15-Sep
1922_2
1922
1923
1924
22-Sep
1923_1
1924_1
1924
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
Newell Creek, near Ben Lomond. Over to the ridge
back of Eccles adjoining Mount Hermon and up to
the mountains of Glenwood.
Big Basin, Gazos Creek, West Fork Waddell,
Empire Grade
Page Mill Road, Portola. Los Gatos northward into
San Mateo, Redwood City
West Los Altos
Big Basin. Black Mountain. Dobey Gulch was the
center. Portola Canyon. Monte bello summit
Big Basin, California Redwood park, Boulder Creek
Big Basin, Redwood Park, west fork of Waddell
Creek, Ben Lomond. Santa Cruz and San Mateo
Counties
Mill creek, Big creek approaching the summit of
Ben Lomond and Brookdale
Headwaters of Opal Creek; North of Big Basin;
Boulder Creek
Liddell Creek and San Vicente Creek
Buzzards Lagoon
23-Jun
30-May
1925
1925_1
6-Jul
Paradise Park, along the San Lorenzo River
1926
1926_2
9-Nov
Felton
Classifi
cation
(Large /
Mega)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(acres)
5 miles
Large
Hundreds of acres
Large
Vast area
2560
Large
Several square
miles
Large
Thousands of
acres
Large
2
Classifi
cation
(Large/
Mega)
Large
28 Square miles
Large
Over 5000 acres
Large
Large
17,920
30,774.73
5,000
Mega
Large
3
Large
16,000
Large
Large
4-mile front
94
Fire Size
GIS
( acres)
3000
3000 acres
1500 acres
3 miles long
700+ acres
100 square feet
(0.002 acres)
Several hundred
acres
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(miles)
5
2 miles linear
4 square miles
Three-mile strip
10 square miles
(6,400acres)
Thousands of
acres
25 square miles
(16,000 acres)
Olive Springs, Clover Spring country, Wright,
Skyland
Bonny Doon, Laguna Creek watershed, near
Davenport and Boulder Creek
Between Saratoga and Big Basin State Redwood
Park
Big Basin
28-Nov
Size (extension)
as shown in the
newspaper
4
Large
1,500
0.0023
Large
100
3
Large
Year
1929
Unique
fire
1929_1
Day/
Month
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
2-Jul
Scotts Valley, Mt. Hermon area, Lompico district,
Eccles near the post office, Soda Springs above
Alma.
1929
1929_3
5-Nov
1930
1930_1
22-Nov
1930
1930_2
18-Dec
1931
1931_1
19-May
1931
1931_2
2-Aug
1932
1932_1
2-Mar
1932
1932
1932
1932
1932
1932
1932
1932_2
1932_3
1932_6
9-Apr
24-Jun
11-Jul
11-Jul
11-Jul
10-Jul
7-Oct
1932
1932_7
26-Aug
1932_5
1932
Size (extension)
as shown in the
newspaper
14-Nov
1933
1933_2
17-Jul
1933
1933
1934
1934
1934
1934
1934
1934
1933_4
1933_5
1934_1
1934_2
1934_3
1934_4
1934_5
1934_10
5-Nov
30-Nov
23-May
7-Jul
8-Jul
30-Jul
30-Jul
14-Sep
Ben Lomond at Burns Ranch
Skyline Blvd and Kings Mountain, Purisima Canyon
(San Mateo County line)
Newell Creek, Charley Canyon, Zayante Canyon,
Bear Creek Valley
Glenwood - Laurel section and Burrell
Pescadero Creek (started in Santa Cruz County it
burned its way to San Mateo County)
Ben Lomond Mountain summit, three miles above
Ben Lomond
Size
Ben Lomond Lodge, near the San Lorenzo River
Mount Hermon, near the Southern Pacific station
Big Basin, near old Bloom Mill
Doyle Gulch
Santa Cruz garbage dump
Near Felton depot, Along San Lorenzo River
Bear Creek
Bonny Doon region, Ben Lomond Mountain, eastern
edge toward San Lorenzo Valley, north of Felton
Ice Cream Grade, near Quistorf Ranch, Bonny Doon
Basin Way, between Luebbert and Weingartner
properties
North rim of Big Basin Redwood Park
De Laveaga Park
Head of Fall Creek
Water street
Above Boulder Creek
Scotts Valley, Capt. Cowie place
Bonny Doon, Louis Reggiardo place
Aptos Creek (2 fires)
95
More than 5000
acres
15 square miles
100 acres
Several hundred
acres
Nearly 10000
acres
50 acres
Several hundred
acres
Classifi
cation
(Large /
Mega)
Large
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(acres)
Fire Size
GIS
( acres)
Classifi
cation
(Large/
Mega)
9,600
Large
10,000
Large
Large
Large
Large
100
3 acres approx.
600 acres
5 acres
2 acres
~10 acres
~20 acres
~2 acres
~10 acres
Large
700 acres
Large
700
5 acres
Less than 1 acre
11 acres
~2 acres
2 acres
10 acres
Over 1 acre
10 acres
2 acres
~250 acres
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(miles)
11
250
Large
Day/
Month
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
1934
14-Sep
1934
14-Sep
Newall Creek
Chittenden Pass (border of Santa Cruz & San
Benito)
Olive Springs (Monterey Bay Redwood Co.)
Hinkley Ridge
Barrett Circus Lot
Redwood Park (Big Basin)
Monterey Bay Lumber Co. Above the Badger Camp
area, near Hinckley Basin
William Harm property, Larkin Valley Road near
Freedom
Buzzard Lagoon, Eureka Canyon district. Felton
Between Aldercroft and Soda Springs Road
Coyote dam area, Santa Clara County. 10 miles east
of Morgan Hill
Pleasant Valley, near Santa Cruz-Watsonville
Highway
Pigeon Point lighthouse, San Mateo County
Mount's Ranch, near Zayante Canyon
Zayante Canyon (Miller’s Gulch to Summit Road)
Near San Andreas School
Kober winery, Love Creek Road, ~1.5 mi from Ben
Lomond
Corcoran Lagoon area (x2), Big Basin and south of
Capitola
Sea Cliff area near Aptos between Big Creek and
Watsonville
Southwest slope of Pine Mountain, near Waddell
Creek
Santa Cruz (not exact location)
Santa Cruz (not exact location)
Santa Cruz (not exact location)
City dump Santa Cruz
North of Corralitos, South of Hazel Dell school
Year
Unique
fire
Size (extension)
as shown in the
newspaper
1936
1936
1936
1936
1936_1
1936_3
1936_4
1936_5
19-Jul
24-Jul
31-Jul
26-Sep
1937
1937_1
17-Apr
1937
1937_2
24-Sep
1937
1939
1937-3
1939_1
25-Sep
21-Jul
1939
1939_2
2-Aug
1939
1939_5
21-Sep
1939
1939
1939
1941
1939_6
1941_1
21-Sep
21-Sep
23-Sep
23-Jun
1941
1941_2
15-Jul
1941
1941_3
22-Sep
1941
1941_4
3-Oct
1941
1941_5
26-Nov
1943
1944
1944
1945
1945
1943_1
1944_1
1944_2
1945_3
1945_5
May
May
May
24-Jul
28-Sep
1939_4
96
Classifi
cation
(Large /
Mega)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(acres)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(miles)
1,000
2
Fire Size
GIS
( acres)
Classifi
cation
(Large/
Mega)
40 acres
~30 acres
200
2-mile front
25 acres
1000 acres
Large
Large
Large
60–70 acres
75
7 acres
75 acres
700 acres
Large
1200 acres
Large
20 acres
400-500 acres
40 acres
~500 acres
5 acres
1,200
Large
Large
2 acres
1 acre each
300
20 acres
300 acres
0.5 acre
30 acres
6.5 acres
20 acres
500 acres
Large
0.51
30
Large
500
Large
Year
Unique
fire
Day/
Month
1946
1946_1
31-Jul
1946
1946_2
31-Jul
1946
1946
1947
1947
1947
1946_4
1947_1
1948
3-Jul
3-Jul
12-Apr
13-Apr
13-Apr
31-Aug
1948_1
1948
13-Sep
1948
15-Sep
1949
1949
1949_1
1949_2
22-Sep
20-Sep
1949
1949_4
3-Jul
1950
1950_1
20-Sep
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
Butano Ridge, Big Basin, Hazel Dell, Alpine Road,
Locatelli Lumber Co. San Mateo County
Sandhill section near Glenwood Road (Los Gatos
Hwy)
Near Graham Hill Road, Eastern Sunrise service
cross (Mount Hermon area)
Pleasant Valley, on watershed land
Arden Forest, miles east of Soquel
China Grade, near Locatelli’s lumber mill
Empire Grade near Alba Road
Pine Mountain - Big basin
Waddell Creek, Scotts Creek Canyon, Skyline
Boulevard, Zayante Canyon, Bonny Doon, Summit
Park, Empire grade, Scotts Creek (area toward the
coast)
Swanton Canyon, Little Creek and Warrenella
Newell Creek Headwaters, 7 miles East of Boulder
Creek
Branciforte Drive, near Glen Canyon Road
Poplar Street, Santa Cruz
Big Basin Redwoods State Park
(Alum Rock entrance, between Pine Mountain and
Carpenter’s Mill)
Poplar Street, Santa Cruz
Note. NS = not specified
97
Size (extension)
as shown in the
newspaper
Classifi
cation
(Large /
Mega)
500–650 acres
Large
12 acres
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(acres)
Biggest
Fire
Size
Year
(miles)
Fire Size
GIS
( acres)
Classifi
cation
(Large/
Mega)
650
~3 acres
~3 acres
100 acres
10–20 acres
2 acres
Over 15,000 acres
23.4 square miles
Large
100
Large
15,000
2200 acres
Large
100 acres
Large
2 acres
120 acres
Large
120
3.5 acres
50 acres
50
Large
Appendix F
Table 8
Weather Conditions (hot, dry, high wind)
Weather Conditions (Hot, Dry, High Wind)
Year
Unique
fire
Day/
month
1867
1867_1
6-Jul
1887
1889
1887_1
1889_1
15-Sep
26-Sep
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
San Lorenzo River. East of Williams
Landing
Forests near Soquel and Aptos.
Watsonville Road to Summit
1891
1891-1
26-Aug
Boulder Creek
1895
1895-1
18-Nov
Vine hill
1899
1899_1
9-Oct
1900
1901
1905
1905
1909
1909
1900_2
1901_2
1905_3
1905_3
22-Sep
13-Oct
9-Nov
9-Nov
17-Sep
17-Sep
1914
1914_1
19-Mar
1916
1916_3
12-Sep
1917
1917_1
21-Jun
1920
1920_2
9-Jul
Loma Prieta Avenue, Skyland, Soquel
Canyon. Brushy's and the Sulphur Springs.
Boulder creek, Bear Creek
King creek. Scotts Valley.
Ben Lomond
Wrights, Loma Prieta, Soquel creek
Cave Gulch
Loma Prieta, Soquel creek
Zayante, Vanlone gulch towards Glenwood
Big Basin, Gazos Creek, West Fork
Waddell, Empire Grade
West Los Altos
Big Basin, Redwood Park, west fork of
Waddell Creek, Ben Lomond. Santa Cruz
and San Mateo Counties
Between Bean and Zayante Creeks
23-Sep
Uvas Mountains
23-Sep
Mt. Madonna near Watsonville
23-Sep
Loma Prieta
Paradise Park, along the San Lorenzo River
Saratoga Summit
Gazos Canyon near Big Basin
Skyline Blvd and Kings Mountain, Purisima
Canyon (San Mateo County line)
Newell Creek, Charley Canyon, Zayante
Canyon, Bear Creek Valley
Loma Prieta Summit
Barrett Circus Lot
Monterey Bay Lumber Co. Above the
Badger Camp area, near Hinckley Basin
Buzzard Lagoon, Eureka Canyon district.
Felton
1909_1
1924
1924
1924_3
1924
1925
1926
1928
1925_1
1926_2
1928_1
6-Jul
9-Nov
10-Aug
1930
1930_1
22-Nov
1930
1930_2
18-Dec
1936
1936
1936_2
1936_4
23-Jul
31-Jul
1937
1937_1
17-Apr
1937
1937-3
25-Sep
Weather conditions
Very warm and dry
High temperatures (92°F
high winds prevail
Hot weather. Intense heat.
Mercury at 110 degrees in the
thermometers
The weather of the past two days
has been as warm as ever
experienced in this county in
November, resulting partially from
the heat sent out by the fires.
98
high wind
thermometer between 73, and 82
ninety degrees.
The Heaviest Winds of the Year
The Heaviest Winds of the Year
100 degrees
100 degrees
temperature unusually hot for this
date in September
dry conditions and forest debris.
Dry weather and constant wind.
Strong wind
Authorities expected equinoctial
storms to end fire season
Authorities expected equinoctial
storms to end fire season
Authorities expected equinoctial
storms to end fire season
Hot, dry summer
Dry, pre-rain
Strong wind
Very low humidity: 12. Dry
Post-season dry spell
Wind
Dry
Very low humidity: 12. Dry
Very low humidity (past 3–4 days)
Year
Unique
fire
Day/
month
1939
1939_5
21-Sep
1939
1939_4
23-Sep
1941
1941_4
3-Oct
1945
1945_5
28-Sep
1946
1946_1
31-Jul
1946
1946_4
3-Jul
1947
1947
1947
1947_1
12-Apr
13-Apr
13-Apr
1948
31-Aug
1948_1
1948
1950
13-Sep
1950_1
3-Jul
Location
(Watersheds/Creeks, place)
Pleasant Valley, near Santa CruzWatsonville Highway
Zayante Canyon (Miller’s Gulch to Summit
Road)
Sea Cliff area near Aptos between Big
Creek and Watsonville
North of Corralitos, South of Hazel Dell
school
Butano Ridge, Big Basin, Hazel Dell,
Alpine Road, Locatelli Lumber Co. San
Mateo County
Near Graham Hill Road, Eastern Sunrise
service cross (Mount Hermon area)
Arden Forest, miles east of Soquel
China Grade, near Locatelli’s lumber mill
Empire Grade near Alba Road
Pine Mountain - Big basin
Waddell Creek, Scotts Creek Canyon,
Skyline Boulevard, Zayante Canyon, Bonny
Doon, Summit Park, Empire grade, Scotts
Creek (area toward the coast)
Swanton Canyon, Little Creek and
Warrenella
Big Basin Redwoods State Park
(Alum Rock entrance, between Pine
Mountain and Carpenter’s Mill)
99
Weather conditions
High temperatures
Baking sun, westerly wind gusts,
poor visibility due to smoke
81 degrees, hard wind, moisture
content 70
Dry, windy conditions
Wind, hot dry weather
Extreme dryness
Exceptionally dry
Exceptionally dry
Exceptionally dry
Extremely dry season; described as
one of the worst dry years on record,
shifting winds, high temperatures.
14 to 20 mile-per-hour wind.
87 degrees
Dry conditions; high temperatures,
Brisk wind