# Fire and Rebuild

Source page: https://carsonriverresorts.com/story/fire-and-rebuild

The Story

Alpine County has been burning and rebuilding since the 1880s — the Great Fire that took Markleeville's Main Street in 1885, the Acorn Fire at Woodfords in 1987, and the July in 2021 when the fire reached the highway at these cabins and jumped it.

The fire record here runs back to the boom towns themselves. In 1882, fire
destroyed much of what remained of fading Silver Mountain City. On August
2, 1885, Markleeville's Great Fire wiped out much of Main Street — the date
is cast in bronze on the front of the Markleeville General Store, which
burned with the street and was rebuilt and open again that same fall.

The town rebuilt partly out of its dead rival: the 1862 Fiske House came
down from Silver Mountain board by board in 1886 and was re-erected in
Markleeville as the Hot Springs Hotel. You can still drink under its roof
at the Cutthroat Tavern.

Woodfords burned a century after that. On July 29, 1987, the Acorn Fire
came down its canyon on 25-mile-an-hour winds and took about 6,000 acres
and 24 homes. The cause was never determined.

The Tamarack Fire started small. On July 4, 2021, lightning struck a rocky
ridgetop in the Mokelumne Wilderness near Tamarack Lake, and the Forest
Service chose to monitor rather than suppress it, citing crew safety in
steep, remote terrain and sparse fuels. For about thirteen days the fire
sat at roughly a quarter acre.

On Friday, July 16, west winds and single-digit humidity blew it up.
Markleeville was placed under a mandatory evacuation order at 7:55 that
evening — on the eve of the 40th Death Ride, with thousands of cyclists
camped around town — and the fire grew by more than twenty thousand acres
in roughly a day. On July 17 it crossed the East Fork Carson at Carson
River Resort. Some fire reports still used the resort's old name, "East
Fork Resort," from decades before. The property was evacuated that
weekend. It crossed Monitor Pass into Nevada on July 21.

The final numbers: 68,637 acres. About two dozen structures destroyed —
three homes lost in Alpine County, most of the rest across the state line.
2,439 people evacuated. Zero deaths, no reported injuries. One hundred
percent containment on October 8, 2021.

What saved one neighborhood was work finished in 2019. The 234-acre
Markleevillage Fuels Reduction Project dropped the fire from the crowns to
the ground at the treated edge, and crews held the line at the homes behind
it. "Those people in that neighborhood sleep much better because of that
protection," said Supervisor Ron Hames.

The summer's best-known survivor was a five-month-old bear cub found with
burned paws, walking on his elbows. Named Tamarack, he was treated with
tilapia-skin grafts, dug out under the clinic fence, and went back to the
wild on his own; hikers later photographed him healthy.

Recovery is still going on. Debris flows off the burn scar closed Highway
89 in August 2022, Turtle Rock Park was cleared of 95 tons of debris and
thousands of hazard trees, and more than 140,000
seedlings — Jeffrey pine, piñon, sugar pine — have gone into the burn since
2022. The losses are permanent too, among them piñon nut-gathering groves
culturally vital to the Washoe. The Alpine Fire Safe Council carries the
forward work: a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, Firewise certification,
and active fuel-reduction projects.

On the flat itself the fire came right up to Highway 89 across the road and
jumped it. Firefighters stayed at the resort and fought the fire from the
parking lots to save the place — that is Phil's own account, first-hand.
The resort was evacuated, spared and open again, and it held its
centennial the following July — two years late, after a pandemic and a fire.
Guests driving in over Monitor Pass see the burn scar and the green coming
back.
The live links are on the Conditions page; ask about the roads when you
call.

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Carson River Resort · 12399 Highway 89, Markleeville, CA 96120 · (530) 694-2229 · store open 8am to 6pm, every day.
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