20 Years After Yellowstone: Share Your Stories

Twenty years ago this month, devastating fire burned through 1.2 million acres of Yellowstone National Park in 1988.

For many Americans, especially friends and supporters of the Arbor Day Foundation, the fires truly “hit home.”

According to John Rosenow, here in Lincoln, Nebraska (over 500 miles away from Yellowstone), smoke from the fires even had a noticeable affect on our sunsets. Hundreds of firefighters worked for months to fight the flames that ultimately leveled a stunning part of one of our national treasures before being forced down by fall and winter snowfalls.

From National Public Radio:

“Michael Stuckey remembers the day vividly. He’s now an interpretative ranger in the Eastern District of Yellowstone National Park. But in 1988, he and other firefighters had been brought in from Hawaii to fight the Clover Mist Fire, which was burning on the park’s eastern boundary.

The team had hiked two miles from their base camp into the forest to cut fire lines. On Aug. 20, through the din of chainsaws, they could hear their fire lookouts yelling for them to head to the safety zone.

Stuckey distinctly remembers the noise. “When the chainsaws stopped, it was supposed to be very quiet,” he says. “What we heard were several trains coming toward us.” READ MORE

As the nation came to grips with the devastation, the Arbor Day Foundation began planting trees in Gallatin National Forest, near Yellowstone.

“The Yellowstone fires were the impetus for the Arbor Day Foundation becoming engaged in the need to replant national forests,” said Rosenow.

That was 20 years ago.

Now, two decades later, trees are still being planted in forests across our nation with the help of Arbor Day Foundation supporters.

It’s interesting to think about the impact we’ll make, 20 years down the road, with every tree we plant together, today.

And it makes me wonder at what must be a vast number of Arbor Day Foundation friends and supporters who, years ago, understood the value of “planting a tree today,” whose commitment years ago yielded what are now wonderful adult trees.

How do you remember the Yellowstone Park fires? Were you an Arbor Day member those 20 years ago, when together we planted our first trees in a National Forest?

Share your stories here, and be sure to check out what’s happening with our ongoing effort to replant our national forests.