Smoke Jumpers

Falling Toward the Fire:

Montana and the Making of the Smokejumpers

The Problem of Roadless Country

In 1940 the Northern Region of the United States Forest Service, headquartered in Missoula, was responsible for roughly eight million acres without roads, scattered across Montana, northern Idaho, and eastern Washington (Northern Region, "1941"; "CPS Unit Number 103-01"). A lightning fire in that country could burn for a day or more before a crew arrived on foot or behind a pack string. The smokejumper, a firefighter delivered by parachute within hours, was the agency's answer to that problem. The method was not invented in Montana, but Montana gave it a permanent headquarters, a wartime labor force, and, in 1949, its worst disaster.

From Patrol Planes to Parachutes

After the First World War the Forest Service began borrowing Army aircraft to spot fires, and by the 1920s planes were patrolling parts of the West (Forest History Society; Northern Region, "Background History"). Officials also considered dropping firefighters from the air but set the idea aside as impractical. In 1934 T. V. Pearson of the Intermountain Region arranged a few demonstration jumps by a professional parachutist, and the effort ended when it was judged too risky. The agency's own history notes that parachutists of the period were widely regarded as daredevils and cranks (Northern Region, "Background History"; "First Parachute Years").

Meanwhile a Washington-based experimental project, created in 1935, spent its money on water and chemical bombs dropped from aircraft. These methods proved impractical with the equipment then available. In 1939 the project moved to the North Pacific Region, and the unspent funds went to parachute tests instead (Forest History Society; "First Parachute Years"). Working under contract with the Eagle Parachute Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, testers made roughly sixty live jumps near Winthrop, Washington, on the Chelan National Forest between October 5 and November 15, 1939, most of them by the contractor's professionals. There were no serious injuries. The outfit that emerged consisted of a padded suit, a football helmet with a wire-mesh mask, and heavy logger's boots (Northern Region, "1939"; "First Parachute Years").

Missoula Becomes the Center, 1940 to 1941

For the 1940 season Region 1 and the North Pacific Region each organized a small squad. The northern squad saw far more use. In a year of record lightning, Region 1 jumpers handled nine selected fires, and the region later estimated a saving of about $30,000, nearly three times the cost of the project (Northern Region, "1940"). That figure is the agency's own accounting, not an independent audit. The first operational fire jump came on July 12, 1940, when Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley dropped to a fire in the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho (Northern Region, "1940"; Forest History Society).

The Army took notice. In June 1940 four staff officers visited the parachute camp at Missoula. One of them, Major William Cary Lee, later applied Forest Service concepts in organizing the first paratroop training at Fort Benning, Georgia (Northern Region, "1940"). Speaking in Missoula in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower praised the agency's contributions to aviation and forest protection, acknowledging how the region's pioneering work set a standard for rugged operations (Eisenhower).

In 1941 the Forest Service concentrated the project in Region 1 at Missoula. The stated reasons were practical. The region held about eight million acres of roadless land, Missoula sat at its center, and the Johnson Flying Service there could supply planes, pilots, and maintenance that were hard to obtain elsewhere. The squad grew to twenty-six men, and a static line, which opens the parachute automatically, replaced the hand-pulled ripcord (Northern Region, "1941").

The Conscientious Objectors, 1943 to 1946

The war emptied the ranks. The 1942 training season opened with only five experienced jumpers, many others having entered military service or war industry (Northern Region, "1942"). In 1943 the Forest Service turned to Civilian Public Service, the program that assigned conscientious objectors to civilian work in place of military duty.

Accounts differ on the size of the first group. The Northern Region history reports 62 candidates chosen from about 300 applications, with some 70 new men trained that year. The Civilian Public Service record puts the number selected at sixty, twenty each from Brethren, Friends, and Mennonite camps (Northern Region, "1943"; "CPS Unit Number 103-01"). The unit, designated CPS Camp 103 and operated by the Mennonite Central Committee, opened in May 1943 and closed in April 1946. Training began at Seeley Lake and moved that summer to Camp Menard, near the Ninemile Remount Depot at Huson ("CPS Unit Number 103-01"). The men received no wages beyond a small monthly allowance, and their upkeep fell to their churches and families (Civilian Public Service Smokejumpers Oral History Project; "CPS Unit Number 103-01").

The program grew quickly. By 1945 the three participating regions had 220 smokejumpers, who were used on 269 fires and made 1,236 fire jumps (Northern Region, "1945"). About 240 Civilian Public Service men served as jumpers over the life of the program ("CPS Unit Number 103-01"). Their reception was mixed. Interviews recorded in 1986 and held by the University of Montana's Mansfield Library include accounts of prejudice against conscientious objectors, and the camp's record describes friction with regular Forest Service employees (Civilian Public Service Smokejumpers Oral History Project; "CPS Unit Number 103-01"). Cooley, who had doubted the arrangement at the outset, later said relations with the Civilian Public Service units became excellent ("CPS Unit Number 103-01").

The 555th and the Balloon Bombs

In April 1945 the Army's 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, an all-Black unit formed in 1943, was assigned as a 300-man smokejumper component of Operation Fire Fly. This military effort was meant to counter fires expected from Japanese balloon-borne incendiary bombs ("Operation Firefly"). Instructors from Missoula trained the men in timber jumping at Pendleton, Oregon (Northern Region, "1945"). The feared wave of fires did not materialize. Between April and October the battalion made about 1,200 jumps and helped suppress 36 fires, serving as auxiliary crews in Regions 1, 4, 5, and 6 ("Operation Firefly"; Northern Region, "1945").

The Depot and the Postwar Force

After the war the Civilian Public Service program was wound down. In 1946, 84 percent of Region 1's 164 jumpers were ex-servicemen, and about 40 percent were college students (Northern Region, "1946"). Demand did not fall. The Northern Region's tabulation of Forest Service jumpers lists 12 in 1940, 220 in 1945, and a peak of 446 in 1970 (Northern Region, table following "1979"). In 1953 Region 1 alone recorded 994 jumps to 236 fires, the busiest season to that date (Northern Region, "1953").

Ground was broken in 1952 for a new Aerial Fire Depot at the Missoula airport, after Congress authorized $700,000 for it (Northern Region, "1952"). On September 22, 1954, Eisenhower dedicated the depot before a crowd the region estimated at more than 30,000 (Northern Region, "1954"; Eisenhower). In his remarks he called the depot the culmination of twenty years of work and pledged continued federal support (Eisenhower).

Mann Gulch, August 5, 1949

The event that most changed later practice occurred five years before that ceremony. On August 5, 1949, a fire was reported around midday in the Gates of the Mountains area of the Helena National Forest, about twenty miles north of Helena ("Mann Gulch"; Rothermel 2). The forest supervisor ordered twenty-five jumpers from Missoula. Because of an aircraft shortage, Missoula could send sixteen, and one of those was too ill to jump ("Mann Gulch").

Accounts of the landing time vary. The Forest Service narrative puts the aircraft over the fire at 3:10 p.m., while Richard Rothermel places the jump between 3:50 and 4:10, and the Northern Region history gives 4:00 (Rothermel 3; Northern Region, "1949"; "Mann Gulch"). The crew's foreman, R. Wagner Dodge, and the spotter, Earl Cooley, considered the fire routine. Turbulence forced a high drop that scattered equipment, and the crew's radio was broken in the process (Rothermel 3; "Mann Gulch").

Dodge went ahead to meet a Forest Service guard, James Harrison, and rejoined the crew at about 5:40 p.m. as it moved down the gulch toward the Missouri River. Within minutes they saw fire blocking that route and turned back up the slope (Rothermel 4). Two explanations for how the fire reached the mouth of the gulch persist. One holds that downdrafts from a small thunderstorm blew it there. The other holds that fire whirls carried firebrands across (Rothermel 4).

Rothermel's reconstruction has the crew drop its tools and the fire overtake them, with the slowest men caught at about 5:56 p.m., a time drawn from Harrison's stopped watch (Rothermel 7). Dodge lit a fire in the grass ahead of the flames and lay down in the burned ground. The Forest Service narrative calls this the first known escape fire, and both it and Rothermel agree that the crew did not follow him ("Mann Gulch"; Rothermel 7). Two jumpers, Robert Sallee and Walter Rumsey, reached the ridge through a crevice in the rimrock and survived (Rothermel 8). Sixteen men were caught, and thirteen died: twelve jumpers and Harrison, who was himself a former jumper (Rothermel 1; Northern Region, "1949"). Two of the burned jumpers lived through the night and died in Helena hospitals the next morning ("Mann Gulch").

Rothermel cautions that events late in the sequence "cannot be verified" and are reconstructed estimates (2). That caution applies to every account of the last twenty minutes, since only three participants survived to testify.

Aftermath

The Northern Region's history for 1949 stated that the tragedy was unconnected with the jumping itself and would have occurred had a ground crew been caught in the same position (Northern Region, "1949"). That is the judgment of the agency that ran the program. The Forest Service's larger response was in research. Harry Gisborne, the region's pioneering fire scientist, died of a heart attack in Mann Gulch that autumn while investigating the fire. His successor, Jack Barrows, was directed to expedite research on fire behavior and established the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory at Missoula in 1960 (Rothermel 2). In 1979 the author Norman Maclean asked that laboratory to reconstruct the fire's behavior for the book that became Young Men and Fire, published in 1992 (Rothermel 2).

By that time the smokejumper organization Montana had hosted since 1940 had spread across the West. Its Missoula depot remained the center of Forest Service training and dispatch, and its origins in experiment, wartime shortage, and federal contract remain visible in the record.

Works Cited

"CPS Unit Number 103-01." The Civilian Public Service Story, Mennonite Central Committee, civilianpublicservice.org/camps/103/1. https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/103/1. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Civilian Public Service Smokejumpers Oral History Project, 1986. OH 163, Archives and Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Archives West, finding aid prepared by Teresa Hamann, 2012, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv94625. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Eisenhower, Dwight D. "Remarks at Dedication of Aerial Fire Depot, Municipal Airport, Missoula, Montana." 22 Sept. 1954. The American Presidency Project, edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-dedication-aerial-fire-depot-municipal-airport-missoula-montana. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"First Parachute Years." Missoula Smokejumper History, US Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, 21 Jan. 2025, https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/fire/smokejumpers/missoula/history/first-parachute-years. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Forest History Society. "U.S. Forest Service Smokejumpers." Forest History Society, 29 Apr. 2021, https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/fire-u-s-forest-service/u-s-forest-service-smokejumpers/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"Mann Gulch." Missoula Smokejumper History, US Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, 21 Jan. 2025, https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/fire/smokejumpers/missoula/history/mann-gulch. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

United States, Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Region, Aviation and Fire Management. History of Smokejumping. R1-80-22, 1 Aug. 1980. Forest History Society, https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/History-of-Smoke-Jumping.pdf. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"Operation Firefly & the 555th." Missoula Smokejumper History, US Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, 21 Jan. 2025, https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/fire/smokejumpers/missoula/history/operation-firefly. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Rothermel, Richard C. Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn't Be Won. General Technical Report INT-299, US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station, May 1993. Forest History Society, https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Mann_Gulch_Fire_A_Race_That_Could_Not_Be_Won_May_1993.pdf. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.