‘There’s still beauty’: a national park bounces back after California’s biggest single fire

Dani Anguiano in Lassen Volcanic national park, California, with photographs by Andri Tambunan

The fire was coming.

Roughly 30 miles of dense forest withering under extreme drought stood between Lassen Volcanic national park and the Dixie fire – land ready to ignite.

The historic town of Greenville had already been reduced to rubble by the flames. Entire communities had fled. Jim Richardson, the park superintendent, understood the blaze would soon be at his doorstep despite the efforts of thousands of firefighters.

The question on his mind was what could be spared in the fire’s march across the Sierra Nevada.

“We knew that all the fuels in the forest around us were very flammable,” Richardson said. “Within the first two days I recognized that our park was at risk from this fire.”

The events of August 2021 are seared into the landscape of Lassen. Hillsides are blackened, trees are charred and toothpick-thin. A drive along the park highway, around meandering mountains and bubbling mud pools, reveals swaths of land reminiscent of Mordor. Fire is a part of the ecosystem here, but the park had never before experienced one as destructive as the Dixie fire.

The blaze, California’s largest ever single fire, burned almost 70% of Lassen. A third of the burn area saw the sort of high-severity fire that kills most trees and bakes the nutrients from topsoil.

However, there is evidence of resilience among the devastation – sprouts emerging from the scorched soil and the black and green mosaic of the mountains. The recovering ecosystem in this off-the-beaten path national park serves as a reminder of the threats to the US’s wild places and offers lessons about how to protect public lands in an era of climate crisis.

‘Not the type of fire that normally occurred’

Lassen Volcanic national park, located in far northern California at the southern end of the Cascades, has been shaped by disaster. It was created after the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak to preserve the area for future study, becoming only the 17th national park.

In July 2021, it had recently fully reopened after the winter’s below-average snowpack melted. While less popular than Yosemite or Joshua Tree, Lassen typically received over 500,000 annual visitors. The park was anticipating more record visitation amid the Covid-19 pandemic from travelers eager to see the world’s largest volcanic dome, explore trails leading to waterfalls and hydrothermal features, and trek along the Pacific Crest Trail.

But as the Dixie fire burned across the Sierra Nevada, Lassen staff closely monitored the blaze, and soon closed two remote entrances and halted backcountry overnight camping.

By early August, Lassen closed completely to give firefighters unimpeded access. Staff often worked 16-hour days mapping out the blaze and figuring out how to protect the park and buildings, Richardson recalled.

Prescribed burns and natural fires had already reduced much of the vegetation in some parts of Lassen. But with the Dixie fire roaring closer, firefighters sought to do more to try to save what they could, including the Kohm Yah-mah-nee visitor center and nearby towns.

Crews spent days using heavy machinery to clear fuels around fire lines, and then, when the wind allowed for it, they set another fire in the path of the oncoming blaze. They laid fire