The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, or the Devil's Broom fire) was a wildfire in the Inland Northwest region of the United States that in the summer of 1910 burned three million acres (4,700 sq mi; 12,100 km2, approximately the size of Connecticut) in North Idaho and Western Montana, with extensions into Eastern Washington and Southeast British Columbia.

[1] The area burned included large parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests.

It killed 87 people,[5] mostly firefighters,[6][7] destroyed numerous manmade structures, including several entire towns, and burned more than three million acres of forest with an estimated billion dollars' worth of timber lost.

[9][10] In the aftermath of the fire, the U.S. Forest Service received considerable recognition for its firefighting efforts, including a doubling of its budget from Congress.

"[1] The drought resulted in forests with abundant dry fuel, in an area which had previously experienced dependable autumn and winter moisture.

[9] August 20 (Saturday) brought hurricane-force winds to the interior northwest, whipping the hundreds of small fires into one or two much larger blazing infernos.

It was reported that, at night, five hundred miles (800 km) out into the Pacific Ocean, ships could not navigate by the stars because the sky was cloudy with smoke.

[9] The extreme scorching heat of the sudden inferno has been attributed to the expansive Western white pine forests that covered much of northern Idaho at the time, due to their flammable sap.

The Great Fire of 1910 cemented and shaped the U.S. Forest Service,[22] which at the time was a newly established department on the verge of cancellation, facing opposition from mining and forestry interests.

His efforts would lead to the creation of the Weeks Act, which called for cooperation among federal, state and private agencies to address fire protection.