Despite devastation, Cottonwood Fire leaves behind ‘islands of hope’ on Beaver Mountain

BEAVER — For miles, Beaver Mountain is now a landscape of black. Burned trees stretch across hillsides. Ash covers the forest floor. In some neighborhoods, only chimneys and concrete foundations remain where family cabins once stood.

The destruction is overwhelming, but scattered among the burned forest are pockets of green, places where campgrounds, cabins and trees survived.

“We wouldn’t believe it when we first saw it,” said Beaver County Commissioner Tammy Pearson. “Just the whole thing. We thought it was all gone and to get up here and be able to see some islands of hope, we couldn’t believe it.”

Pearson and the fire manager said those islands are because of years of wildfire mitigation work that helped firefighters defend parts of the mountain, even as the Cottonwood Fire became one of the most destructive wildfires in Utah history.

The Cottonwood Fire has burned about 94,000 acres in Beaver and Piute counties.

Fire managers say approximately 150 structures have been burned, which include outbuildings, sheds, RVs, cabins and homes. Another 130 structures were saved.

One of the clearest examples of mitigation efforts between the county, state and Forest Service can be found at Tushar Campground, where many buildings and much of the surrounding forest remain standing.

“We always have our 4-H camp here,” Pearson said. “So, I’ve known this place for 43 years, and this was a big save for us.”

She credits years of forest treatments, such as clearing brush, creating defensible space, and trimming branches off trees 5 feet off the ground to give firefighters a chance.

“The treatments that they’ve done for years is what saved this,” said Pearson. “These guys have put years and years and years into that.”

Fire spokesperson Alyssa Mason said homeowners can improve their chances by creating defensible space around their homes.

“Learn what you can do to kind of defend your home. Whether that’s moving your firewood, whether that’s limiting trees. There are easy steps that don’t cost money that everybody can do regularly,” said Mason.

However, even the best mitigation efforts can’t save everything.

“We were estimating that this thing came through at about 14 football fields a minute,” said Mason.

Despite the devastation, officials repeatedly returned to one statistic they consider the most important. No lives have been lost.

“We have a lot of positives to be thankful for,” said Pearson. “It’s nothing short of a miracle that we didn’t lose lives. Our biggest win is that nobody died.”

Beaver County Sheriff Cody Black said that outcome became even more meaningful after seeing what survived.

“I don’t like to say that we got a lot of W’s out of this, but we did, because we still have this place,” Black said while standing at Tushar Campground. “We got the people evacuated. There’s no loss of life. That’s what is most important.”

He said that if the fire arrived just one day later, the campground likely would have been filled with children attending girls camp.

“We got lucky on that we didn’t have to evacuate a bunch of children out of this place,” he said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, firefighters have completed 169 miles of fire line, with about 33 miles fully secured, resulting in roughly 15% containment.

However, fire managers said the burned areas are still dangerous and state Route 153 remains closed.

“There are trees that have fallen over in the road that the firefighters have to cut a path for to get out,” said Black. “If somebody gets up in here and they don’t have a chainsaw and can’t get out, if the fire burns back or something happens, I can’t help them.”

Falling trees and rocks rolling down the mountainside are among some of the dangers still in the area.

“It’s going to be closed for a long time,” said Mason. “Especially as we get some moisture, we get some rain, this area is going to become very unstable.”

For Pearson, the view from Beaver Mountain is heartbreaking, but she’s thankful there are still places on the mountain the fire didn’t take away.

“It’s sad, but know that there is hope,” she said. “We’ll rebuild. We’ll come out of this. It might take us a few years.”