Cold Missouri Waters

What would make a Canadian folk singer pull off a New Jersey highway and weep? For James Keelaghan — the author and composer of “Cold Missouri Waters,” a song about the deadly 1949 Mann Gulch wildfire that killed 13 firefighters in Montana — it was the sound of his tune being sung by New Jersey native Richard Shindell, then part of a trio of folk artists who called themselves Cry Cry Cry. “I visited my agent, who was living in Westwood, New Jersey, and he also represented Richard (Shindell) and he gave me the new CD. And I was in the car on tour, so I drove … for a little while and then I put the disc in,” Keelaghan said. “And I had to pull over because it made me cry, and what made me cry was hearing somebody with an American accent singing it. “The Mann Gulch fire was a wildfire reported on August 5, 1949, in a gulch located along the upper Missouri River in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness (then known as the Gates of the Mountains Wild Area), Helena National Forest, in the U.S. state of Montana. A team of 15 smokejumpers parachuted into the area on the afternoon of August 5, 1949, to fight the fire, rendezvousing with a former smokejumper who was employed as a fire guard at the nearby campground. As the team approached the fire to begin fighting it, unexpected high winds caused the fire to suddenly expand, cutting off the men’s route and forcing them to flee uphill. During the next few minutes, a “blow-up” of the fire covered 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) in ten minutes, claiming the lives of 13 firefighters, including 12 of the smokejumpers. Only three of the smokejumpers survived. The fire would continue for five more days before being controlled. The United States Forest Service drew lessons from the tragedy of the Mann Gulch fire by designing new training techniques and safety measures that developed how the agency approached wildfire suppression. The agency also increased emphasis on fire research and the science of fire behavior. University of Chicago English professor and author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) researched the fire and its behavior for his book, Young Men and Fire (1992) which was published after his death. Maclean, who worked northwestern Montana in logging camps and for the Forest Service in his youth, recounted the events of the fire and ensuing tragedy and undertook a detailed investigation of the fire’s causes. Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 1992.[3] The 1952 film Red Skies of Montana, starring actor Richard Widmark and directed by Joseph M. Newman, was loosely based on the events of the Mann Gulch fire.The location of the Mann Gulch fire was added as a historical district to the United States National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 1999. A sign is placed near Mann Gulch to memorialize the tragedy, and can be seen from the waters of the nearby Missouri River. The fire started when lightning struck south of Mann Gulch, a tributary of the Missouri River that cuts through steep terrain for approximately five miles ( 8 km ) in the Gates of the Mountains, The place was noted and named by Lewis and Clark on their journey west in 1805. The fire was spotted by forest ranger James O. Harrison around noon on August 5, 1949. Harrison, a college student at Montana State University, was working the summer as recreation and fire prevention guard for the Meriwether Canyon Campground. He had been a smokejumper the previous year but had given it up because of the danger. As a ranger, he still had a responsibility to watch for and help fight fires, but it was not his primary role. On this day, he fought the fire on his own for four hours before he met the crew of smokejumpers who had been dispatched from Hale Field, Missoula, Montana, in a Douglas DC-3