Somewhere on a shadowy shelf, amid the dusty books and pamphlets here at the ranch, rests a newspaper from eighty-seven years ago. On those faded pages, no photos to spark the imagination, just words to kindle warning about the battle ongoing: “Conflagration sweeping south from Big River to the Navarro!”
The newspaper fails to mention most of those who stood against the flames, those who sounded alarm, the men and boys, the girls and women. They are all gone now, only memories handed down.
During the late afternoon or early evening of Monday, September 21, 1931, three fires were set near the South Fork of Big River. The goal for the relatively small blazes, clearing former timber and brush land for grazing.
The following morning, fifteen year-old Emery Escola accompanied his mother, Nannie Flood Escola, out the Comptche Road to its junction with what we now call the Littleriver Airport Road. At this location, Nannie Escola taught at the one room Ellison School that served students in grades one through eight.
Even before the bell rang, dew scarcely clung to the tips of grass outside. By the time class started humidity reached only 4%. The warm, dry morning turned ominous as Emery performed outdoor chores. By ten-thirty winds kicked up to forty miles miles per hour. Less than thirty minutes later Emery spotted smoke to the north and east.
A half mile east of the school, the lookout at Mathison Peak saw the smoke too. The night before, the office of the Mendocino Lumber Company received calls reporting the small fires around the South Fork of Big River, on or near the company's property. Those fires were essentially ignored as too insignificant to bother suppressing. But the hot, dry winds of September 22nd drove those flames into something worth remembering. Emery Escola used his pocket knife to scratch the date into a wooden post at the Ellison School.
At the post office in Comptche, Charlotte Layton and the Del Grosso brothers spotted the smoke. So did Bill Docker, of Docker Hill, who had ridden into town with H.D. Robins, woods watchman for Mendocino Lumber Company. Robins said he'd stopped at a high point about 10:15 that morning, a place where he could see both Big River to the north and Comptche to his south. He claimed he hadn't seen any noticeable fire.
Bill Docker said, “It looks now as if it’s in Nigger Nat’s Opening.”
Leo Del Grosso drove Charlotte Layton out the Orr Springs Road, past Philbrick's ranch, and on up to her home at Hayslett Hill where she fed him lunch. It had been a productive canning season that summer. The mother of three children, Mrs. Layton had put up three hundred quarts of canned fruits, vegetables, meats and jellies. She also sold five quarts of milk a day from her six cows. The wheat crop fed all her cattle, a fattened hog, and a flock of hens. Surplus wheat was already sacked for sale and hay filled her barn as well as those of her two closest neighbors.
After lunch Leo Del Grosso and Charlotte drove along the Hayslett ridge toward the smoke until they saw the fire barreling toward them. Leo turned the vehicle around and sped back to the Layton farm, where Charlotte telephoned as many Comptche neighbors as possible to give warning. Victor Del Grosso met them outside and at Charlotte’s insistence broke down the fences to free her stock. By then the fire had raged up Hayslett Hill and into her east field. Leo Del Grosso and Charlotte’s grown daughter, Ramona, left in one automobile, planning to reach Charlotte’s other two children at the Halfway House School. Charlotte called Eiler Oppenlander to ask if he could phone some of the men from Keene Summit to come and fight the fire, but he told her that most were already working a small blaze on Albion Lumber Company property.
As the Layton barn sparked Victor Del Grosso started his car and Charlotte ran one last time into her home to telephone Lena Meshishnek. Flames crackled at the back of the house while Charlotte hollered into the receiver, “It’s too late here! Help my neighbors.”
Lena answered, “No one can get through. The Ciro house is on fire.”
The fire had already jumped ahead of them, down Larson Grade, hop-scotching around the Tahja place, burning the Russell’s new house; it crossed Orr Springs Road, on a south and westward path. Wind-fanned cinders ignited another blaze below Morrison Gulch, near the Flynn Creek Road, south of Comptche. The main section of the blaze spread, rampaging over McDonald Gulch. By mid-afternoon the fire's front extended two miles wide, from the Devil’s Nest ridge to the Flynn Creek Road, as it approached the Keene Summit area.
Charlotte Layton’s dwelling burned to the ground shortly after she escaped. Six of her cows and a horse perished in the inferno. One cow, a calf, and her fattened hog sought cover in the orchard and survived the blaze. Mrs. Layton and more than a dozen of her neighbors took refuge in the Del Grosso house, cut off from any outside help as the fire neared. Burning branches loosened from trees and hurtled past as wet blankets and cloths were passed up to Victor and Leo Del Grosso to keep the roof of their house damp. Children huddled inside in a room so hot the drapery caught fire before Mrs. Layton tore it down and doused it with water.
In the Keene Summit region the fire scorched nineteen rail cars belonging to the Albion Lumber Company. Nine-year-old Margaret Fay, as usual, had stayed late at the Keene Summit School to help clean the schoolhouse. She heard the whirling wind and stepped outside, where a yard long, smoking chunk of redwood bark blew by her. She ran across the road to find Merl Smith, her teacher, at the Smith family home.
A quarter mile north, up the Flynn Creek Road, several members of the Newman family rushed to wet down the roof of their home. Miriam Newman, who was born when a century had entered and another petered out in 1900, ran from the house and swung the family Bible over her head. For decades afterward she swore the good book turned the wind enough to spare their house, where she still dwelt when another century arrived. Somewhat miraculously, the flames bent away from the Newmans, hopped the road and took the nearby Thompson place and a great number of their sheep instead.
The fire burned for several days, reaching the edge of the Navarro River, running westward to approximately the edge of Dimmick State Park. Backfires eventually stopped the blaze.
Mrs. Layton and all those who took a stand at the Del Grosso place survived, so did the Keene Summit Schoolhouse. Though thousands of acres of farm and timberland lay scorched and countless number of livestock and wild animals were killed, not a single human died as a result of the Comptche Fire of 1931. By the evening of the first day of the inferno Mrs. Bishop of the Mendocino branch of the Red Cross gathered clothing to be sent to those left homeless. At Red Cross expense, and in fairly short order, Mrs. Layton’s home was rebuilt.
Emery Escola, the boy who spotted the fire on the morning of September 22nd, went on to a long career in the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, retiring as a battalion chief. He also helped organize many of our local volunteer fire departments.
Remarkable story that captures the danger of wildfires and the fear they engender. Thank you for telling it.
Our family, here during that fire, said the fire sounded like a steam locomotive roaring up out of the Big River drainage…anything that could burn from Big River almost to the Navarro River in one day was powerful indeed…
I believe James Ciro is the last person to remember this fire. Jim was born in 1923 and the fire burned in 1931. He escaped the fire in a horse drawn wagon along with his mother the siblings. The Oppenlander(Now Shandel) family took them in. The Ciro’s lost everything in that fire.
Will Oppenlander road a horse with a drip torch to successfully backfire the area around a major portion of his ranch that was facing the direction of the approaching fire.
Jerry Philbrick’s mother was the oldest Ciro sibling surviver. Jerry currently occupies the Ciro family house reconstructed after the fire.
As George Hollister and Katy Tahja’s comments allude to, there would be much more to a complete telling of all the details surrounding the Comptche Fire of 1931. I believe two members of the Oppenlander and Ottoson families drove an automobile through the flames up to the eastern end of the Hayslett area to check on folks up there. Full disclosure: the Margaret Fay (maiden name)referenced at the Keene Summit School was my mother. Oddly enough, though the fire swept south, paralleling the Flynn Creek Road, it did not turn westward down the south fork of the Albion River as it did at the Navarro River. That simple twist of fate saved thousands of acres of timberland.
Charlotte Layton wrote a riveting narrative titled “The Comptche Fire”. That publication is available from the Comptche Volunteer Fire Department in exchange for a small donation.
A fascinating part of this tale is how much we have changed in such a short period of time. It’s hard to believe.
Charlotte was rich. “I had then six cows giving milk, three more that we should, by October, be milking and four nice heifers developing most vigorously. I was selling daily five quarts of milk and shipping a five-gallon can of cream every five days, and had just bought a new separator./ Then, too, after a most abundant crop, my barn and the John Dietz barn and a cabin on the Fred Jones place were filled with this years hay. It was a fine quality and I was happy thinking how bountifully we could feed it out this winter and how amply our cattle would repay, in cream checks, for their generous treatment. I had, too, a young hog fattened for slaughter and a flock of hens, and plenty of wheat to feed them and several sacks to sell which I had raised and threshed. Also a ton of potatoes dug and sacked. The potatoes of Hayslett Hill were famous.”