Gold Rush town’s residents back as fire threat eases
Life for residents and merchants in and around the Sierra foothills community of Mariposa began returning to normal Sunday as the immediate threat of wildfire was kept at bay.
Firefighters continued to make incremental progress on the once-fearsome Detwiler Fire west of Yosemite National Park, bringing parkbound visitors back to the popular Gold Country town and allowing more evacuees to come home.
The blaze, which sparked a week earlier and burned 76,250 acres, has forced thousands to flee and destroyed 63 homes and 68 outbuild-
ings, according to fire officials. It was 45 percent contained Sunday, fire officials said.
The owners of Charles Street Dinner House, a popular restaurant on Mariposa’s main drag, opened Saturday for dinner for the first time since the town evacuated early last week.
“Everyone is still trying to find their new normal,” restaurant coowner Jennifer Newman said. “The fire is still nearby, and we’re concerned. A lot of people are hesitant to be unpacking.”
On most weekends during the peak summer season, the restaurant — like many of the businesses in the small 1850sera downtown — is filled with tourists. But as visitors find other ways to Yosemite amid the several road closures in the area and residents return to town, the restaurant has shifted to serving weary locals with depleted food stocks and rattled nerves.
“It’s been nice to socialize with everyone and see they’re OK,” Newman said. “It’s been tough, but we’re so happy the town is still here. We were pretty sure we were going to come back to a wasteland.”
The once fast-growing blaze became one of the state’s largest and most menacing this year as it doubled in size on many days and left miles of scorched earth in the small communities along Highway 49. It’s still burning in rural areas north and east of Mariposa.
While thousands of firefighters on the ground, along with helicopters and airplanes attacking from the air, successfully defended the 2,000-person city of Mariposa, rural homes to the north and west were lost.
Bobbi Joe Young, who commutes from nearby Catheys Valley to Mariposa, where she holds down four jobs, had feared that at least some part of town would burn as flames came within a quarter mile of the historic area.
“I cried every day during the evacuations,” she said.
Young was one of the first to return to work after the city reopened to traffic Friday and was cleaning the bar and getting the ice machines going at Bett’s Gold Coin tavern.
“This is tourist season. It’s when things are happening,” she said. “I need the town to stay open so I can actually make a living.”
Over the weekend, evacuation orders were also lifted for several populated areas north of Mariposa, including Mount Bullion and Bear Valley. Later Sunday, residents of the Coulterville area were allowed to return.
While immediate danger from the fire has decreased significantly, firefighters were concerned about increasingly unfavorable weather. Forecasters predicted 100-degree temperatures in the region early this week.
The Detwiler Fire became unruly largely because of the troubling fire conditions that plague the state. An especially wet winter contributed to abundant growth of thick, now bone-dry, vegetation. The proliferation of burnable material was coupled with a hot June and July in the lower foothills, where triple-digit days have been common.
The state has already seen about twice the normal acreage burned for this time of year, according to state and federal figures.
The Detwiler Fire is one of eight large wildfires burning in California. Evacuation orders were lifted Sunday morning for all residents affected by another troubling fire — the 18,430acre Whittier Fire that ignited July 8 in Santa Barbara County. Chronicle staff writer Kurtis Alexander contributed to this report.