On August 20 and 21, 1910, one of the largest forest fires in United States history swept over Idaho and Montana, including this area. The fire burned three million acres, destroyed eight billion board feet of timber, and killed 86 people. Hurricane-force winds shot fireballs for miles across the mountains, and the sky turned dark as far east as Colorado. An army of 10,000 firefighters made dramatic but ultimately futile efforts to stop the blaze. The burn left fire-ravaged cedar snags in the valley below and surrounding hillsides covered with lodgepole pine, which replaced the white pines, cedars, and other more desirable species destroyed in the fires. Large amounts of dead and down timber, invasion by bark beetles and white pine blister rust, and successive fires re-scarred the burned-over areas, resulting in long-term changes in the area's ecology. In recent years the Forest Service has logged and burned some lodgepole pine stands, replacing them with other species to diversify and improve the valley ecosystem.