A Firefighter’s Steamer

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Howard and his two sons ran the sawmill from 1915 to 1938. Howard died in 1938.

After his death, the sawmill and its steam power plant were purchased by Montana Polytechnical College (Rocky Mountain College). They operated the sawmill to teach sawmill engineering. The U.S. Government took over the sawmill and ran it from 1944 to 1946 to cut mine timbers, which were needed for the nearby chromium mine. A teacher from the college bought the sawmill from the government at the end of the war. He ran it for two years and then shut it down. When the teacher died, the Marsfield family inherited the sawmill.

It is at this point that many of these early steam engines met an untimely end. Fortunately for no. 26701, George bought the sawmill and this Case from the family for $1,000 in 1950.

George ran the sawmill and the associated logging operation from 1950 to 1958. There was a good supply of timber within high-wire logging distance and the sawmill never moved from its 1915 location. The government closed the forest to logging in 1958 and ordered the sawmill and the steam engine off the land. The boiler was given its annual inspection by Pat Whelan, the Montana boiler inspector, in 1958. It was in good operating condition when it was shut down. This was the last time the boiler made steam.

At this time George reinstalled the wheels and running gear, and using a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer pulled the Case out of the woods to Herb Russel’s ranch between Nye and Livingston. It sat out in the rain on the Limestone Ranch from 1958 to 1978.

In 1978, George had the Case loaded on a flatbed truck and hauled to his yard in Absarokee. It sat in the open, peeking out from behind George’s house, for the next 23 years.

I purchased the Case in April 2001, had it loaded on a lowboy trailer and hauled to my ranch in White City, Ore., where I began the two year refurbishment.

Fighting a Fire for Old Friends

Absarokee, Mont., seems like a long way away from Oregon, and without a specific reason to go there I don’t think anyone would happen upon this little town. In the summer/fall of 2006 I was working as a pilot for Erickson Aircrane, a large firefighting helicopter operator. We flew all over the U.S. last year, from Texas to Massachusetts to Oregon. Toward the end of the summer I was based in Plains, Mont., as an initial attack helicopter. This means that we are the first responder of observed smoke and as such fly all over the state putting out fires.

So when I was dispatched to Big Timber, Mont., I didn’t really look where the fire was, I just flew to it to begin work. The fire was already large when we arrived, much too big for a single helicopter to contain. And later that first day the fire blew up and became a monster. It swept down toward a town called ... Absarokee. So there I was working near a town that I did not expect to ever see again.

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