The Big Burn

In my opinion, "The American Experience" is a great show which has produced many of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The quality is consistently very good or great and I'd place "The Big Burn" among the very good.

The story is narrated by Sam Waterston...who often narrated stories in the series. It's all about the 'big burn'...a huge and very destructive fire which hit the Idaho area in the early 20th century. It was a chance to see how the US government, particularly the Forestry Service, could deal with such calamities and the resulting blaze unfortunately took many brave men's lives.

As you'd expect, the show utilizes photos, interviews and video clips to tell the story. The result is captivating and never dull.

A must-see documentary for those that want to know Idaho/Montana history. This great documentary takes an in-depth view of the Great Fire of 1910, the establishing of the National Forest Department, and the burning of Wallace, Idaho. Stunning was the fact that within 36 hours the fire spread throughout the forest an area the size of Connecticut. 3 million acres of forest were eventually lost.

4/2/18. An interesting short documentary about fighting forest fires. There is interesting historical footage and the methods used are shown. This whole issue is now more important than ever considering that in recent years thousands of areas of American land have been scorched from wildfires.

The title says it all. While the history of the Forest Service is admittedly a hard subject to treat in an inspiring manner, it could have been done better. I found the portrayal of Taft, Idaho well done, and the involvement of the Buffalo Soldiers was a part of American History that I did not know. However the rest of the show really dragged. The interviewees were some of the most boring subjects ever in a documentary. I nearly fell asleep and it was mid-afternoon.