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 near the old East Fork Resort and reached this property, which 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 — Phil's own account, first-hand, on site in September 2026, and it settles the version guests had been telling in their reviews. 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.
