The summer of 1936 was hot and dry across the northern Midwest. On July 25, a fire started at or near the Consolidated Paper Company's lumber mill camp on Siskiwit Bay, on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Its cause was never officially determined. By the time it was out, three fires had burned 27,000 acres — about 20 percent of the island — and changed its forests more than any other single event in its recorded history.
Smoke from the 1936 fire. Credit: NPS, National Visual Inventory Cards.
Who fought it
Congress had authorized a national park on Isle Royale in 1931, and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews were on the island building its buildings, docks and campgrounds, while the paper company logged balsam fir and spruce pulpwood. When the fire was reported, it had already grown to 200 acres, and 160 men from the two island CCC camps went to fight it.
How it grew
| Date, 1936 | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 25 | fire starts near the Siskiwit Bay mill camp; 160 CCC enrollees respond |
| July 26 | 40 loggers join; the fire seems under control until strong winds carry it over the lines |
| July 30–31 | 4,000 acres; on the night of the 31st its glow can reportedly be seen over 40 miles away on Michigan's mainland |
| August 1 | the fire threatens the CCC and lumber camps; 400 CCC reinforcements save them, and $100,000 worth of lumber |
| August 2 | an airplane survey spots two large spot fires near Lake Desor |
| August 4 | the first fire is contained after burning more than 5,000 acres |
| August 12 | the larger spot fire has burned about 17,000 acres — the largest in the island's history — and the smaller about 3,000 |
| mid-August | 1,800 men on the fire lines: 1,600 CCC enrollees and the rest loggers and island residents |
| August 13 | winds shift, letting crews backfire and build lines that keep the fire from the eastern resort areas |
| August 18 | heavy rain; all three fires declared out |
CCC enrollees move supplies to and from camp. NPS.
Why it was so hard to fight
The island's ground cover was mostly moss, highly flammable in drought. Rocky outcrops made tractor plows useless, and the fires burned in isolated interior places where crews were slow to arrive and water pumps hard to use.
Life in the fire camps
With 1,600 reinforcements, food often ran short, and meat arrived spoiled. On August 18, firefighters had only beans and cocoa for breakfast and refused to work until more food came. Sanitation was foul and flies swarmed; one acting fire boss called his camp the dirtiest he had ever worked in. Tobacco, rationed for weeks, ran out on August 20, and on August 25 CCC enrollees struck — until tobacco was brought in that afternoon.
Firefighters work to contain the fire. Credit: NPS.
What the fire left
Along the middle of the Greenstone Ridge Trail, the old burn areas are now dense birch and aspen, with few conifers. Birch and aspen are the first trees to grow in sunny, open, disturbed ground, and burn far less readily than the island's common conifers. Charred stumps and long-dead fallen pines still mark where the fire passed.
Sources
Based on "Isle Royale Fire of 1936" from the National Park Service (Isle Royale National Park), a work of the United States government in the public domain. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
In these publicationsIsle Royale National Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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