Just as early Native Americans learned to control fire, they also learned to use it for beneficial purposes, starting fires to relocate game, create forest openings and to alter vegetation types. Today fire is used for a very similar purpose. Fire specialists use prescribed fire to create “mosaics” or areas with differing vegetation types and age classes. Interestingly, unburned intact islands of pinyon-juniper, as well as other unburned-burned vegetation types exist throughout the Sanford fire area, sometimes right next to each other. Actually only 50 percent of the area within the Sanford was burned! What makes some areas burn and other’s not – even when we are seemingly in charge? Some may argue that Mother Nature has a degree in fire ecology, and fires like this are nature’s own “prescribed burn”….

View related panoramas;

• Deep Creek 1
• Deep Creek 2
• Deep Creek 3
• Deep Creek 4